implement consulting group. Good morning, everyone. We are really glad that you've taken the time to join us today. My name is Eva Bergmann. I'm a manager at Implement Consulting Group. And next to me is... Caroline Lin, also manager at Implement. And we are both, you can probably say that, change enthusiasts and transformation nerds. So this topic today is very close to our hearts. We see it every day with clients. And honestly, we experience it ourselves from time to time. So today we're talking about change fatigue and change resilience. And before we get into the topic, we want to say no worries. We will share all of today's material after the session. So let's jump right in. Change has changed. This may sound paradoxical, but this is exactly the reality in which we're all working in right now. Organizational life today is defined by permanent and complex change. Change is no longer a project that you just do. And then there's peace, start and end date. Because change has now become a constant part of our working reality. And to stay fit for the future, organizations have to keep changing. At the same time, however, we see that this constant change is making people and organizations increasingly tired. For example, when I think back to a previous project I did, then I think of a company, global industrial company, roughly around 8000 employees that has gone through four major change initiatives in parallel within 24 months. They did an ERP rollout, new operating model towards a matrix organization, cost efficiency program and the cultural transformation to become more collaborative and accountable. So a lot of change initiatives all at the same time. And what we've been hearing from our clients more and more is, I used to love change. And now I just feel tired. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe you can recognize yourself or you can see it in your team. This fatigue is real and it has a name. It's called change fatigue. And this change fatigue, this development also has a measurable consequence. More than 72% of organizations are in what is known as change saturation, which means being overloaded by too many parallel changes. And this is not just a strenuous month. This is a systematic problem that runs through organizations worldwide. And this has real consequences for people. A recent France-wide study with almost 3000 participants shows more than 32% of employees suffer from change fatigue. That's roughly a third. And these are not people who are simply have no desire for change. These are exhausted, dedicated employees who simply had to go through too much all at once. But before we go deeper, we would actually like to hear from you. We have prepared a short survey with a question. How do you currently experience the amount of organizational change in your company? And there are four options to answer. Very low. So change is easy to handle. Moderate. Mostly well coordinated. Or rather high. So sometimes poorly coordinated, noticeable pressure. Or even very high. So too many parallel initiatives and you're being overloaded. So please take a moment and vote. Yeah. And I'm really excited to see where we land. Because when we did this exact webinar in German a couple of months ago, we could see a clear trend. And I think we can also start to see a clear trend here. Yeah. Very interesting. Thank you. Thank you all for voting. And I can assure you, if you are one of those who selected high or very high, which are most of you, then I can tell you one thing. You are not alone. All the data we gathered for today backs this up. But this is important. This webinar is not just about the problem we see. We also want to offer you a solution today. Yes. And now we have seen some of the numbers. And the survey that we just now did also confirms it again, that a lot of change is happening at once. And this is not just your perception, but it's a reality. And there's a good reason for that. These figures, the 72% and the 70, sorry, and the 32% that we just saw, they tell us something. They tell us that behind these numbers is a pattern in which we all live. Companies have to change in order to survive. That's a natural thing. But technologies and customers are changing faster than the organizations actually can follow and adapt. That's rather new. So the employees are exhausted by the pace of all these changes that are happening towards them. And we are in the middle of this tension. So the question now is, do we just have to accept this? Or is there actually something we can do about it? We have set ourselves up three targets that we would like to achieve for you throughout this webinar. So first, we want you to have an understanding of what change fatigue is and how you can recognize it. Secondly, we want you to know what change resilience then also is and that it can actually be strengthened. Change resilience can be practiced and it can be built. And then lastly, we also want you to know some concrete levers that you can use personally, but also for your team. And if you are a leader, then on that leadership level, or if maybe you work with the organizational development and the organizational setup in general, then there are also some tips there. And all the data that we have gathered for today also backs up our recommendations. So let's jump right in. Change fatigue. So when we were at the change congress in Essen in Germany last year, we met many participants who also said, yeah, change fatigue. That really is a topic that we all feel very much at the moment. It's also an issue that we actually see with many of our customers. And yes, sometimes also with ourselves. But what is it actually, this change fatigue? Change fatigue is the emotional and physical exhaustion that occurs when sustained change exceeds people's capacity. I'll just say that again. The emotional and physical exhaustion that occurs when sustained change exceeds people's capacity and thereby reducing their ability and willingness to adapt and engage. I know it's a relatively long sentence, but there are two key ideas in it. The first one is that it's about ongoing change. So the amount and the speed at which change affects us. There are so many changes happening that they actually exceed our capacity to follow. This is the external condition that we are all operating in. This is the so-called change saturation that Aoife also mentioned before. And then on the other hand, we have the symptoms that are caused by this. And these are things like exhaustion. It's the emotional burden that we carry around. It's maybe also the loss of motivation that we see in our colleagues or maybe also in ourselves. It's the more frequent and louder complaints also in the team about yet another change and possibly even apathy or increased absenteeism when it gets really bad. So if restlessness, apathy, stress, resistance, and skepticism actually increase over a longer period of time, and at the same time motivation, trust, responsiveness, and willingness to stay, they decrease, then there is a high probability that we have change fatigue at play. So it's a systemic problem and not an isolated performance issue. And it's clearly also a global topic. And that we can see by the number of articles that have been published on that topic that has grown dramatically in the last one and a half to two years. Let's have a look at this development. So the first thing is that the burden of change exploded. So a normal employee experienced an average of actually only two plan changes in 2016. And six years later in 2022, we had 10 plan changes. At the same time, the support for these changes collapsed. So the willingness to support change dropped from 74% to 43%. And then we also know that micro changes, so the changes that are close to us, the new leader, the new seating arrangement, they are the most stressful ones. And we can also see that trust decreases and the intention to leave increases. Right now, 27% of respondents of a survey are actually looking for a job in an active way. And then for those of you who are more into the bigger numbers, then, of course, we also need to look at the lost productivity that that entails. And that is between 228 million and 355 million US dollars per year for one medium sized company due to disengagement and turnover. So this is not peanuts. It's a massive systemic problem. And again, the question is, is that just how it is now, Eva? Or is there actually something that we can do? Or do we just have to take that for granted? And the short answer is no. No, we don't have to. The long answer in some, these trends that Carol just mentioned, tell a human story. Too many changes that happened too quickly with too little clarity, involvement and recovery. So if we want to tackle this problem now, it cannot be about pushing people to perform better, but it must be about creating capacity and defining change with more mindfulness. It's about building change resilience. And here's the good news. Change resilience is not an innate trait. So a trait that we are born with. It's a skill that we can develop in a targeted manner, individually and as an organization. This is not wishful thinking. This has been scientifically proven. So what exactly do we mean by building change resilience? Change resilience describes the systemic and human ability to absorb change and learn from it without losing performance, trust or wellbeing. So it's not about toughening up or taking on more. It's about dealing with change consciously and actively. So if we want to put it very, very simple, change resilience is energy plus adaptability. Resilience, therefore, means being able to actively maintain your energy so that the focus and emotional stability through the change. And being resilient means experiencing control, having clarity, maintaining routines and having access to social resources, which is also very important and thus remaining adaptable. And most importantly, both people and organizations can develop the skill in a targeted manner. When people and organizations build change resilience together, these efforts reinforce each other. So how do we actively strengthen change resilience now? To strengthen change resilience, we look at a system of five dimensions that all interact with each other. On the one hand, it's about remaining stable and capable of acting. So keeping one's own balance, even under constant change. And on the other hand, it's about creating clarity and change. That is knowing what is important and concentrating on the essentials, both personally and organizationally. Especially when a lot is moving. So it helps to consciously look at what remains stable. For example, I'm talking about common goals, values or core processes that do not change, but provide orientation. So we need to create clarity in change by explicitly naming what remains the same. So what gives stability even as the how changes. And the third point on the slide deals with adaptive working and thinking. We achieve this when we accept uncertainty on the one hand and react flexibly on the other. The fourth dimension is social and organizational support. By which we mean that people build on the purpose of transformation, get the feeling that they can get involved and thus develop a sense of belonging. So really standing behind this change. And the last dimension is energy and self-management. So consciously working with breaks, routines and focus. So the crucial thing is that resilience is not a personality trait. It's a trainable process. So let's take a closer look at two of these dimensions. Adaptive working and thinking. So meaning adaptability and energy and self-management. I just said that remaining adaptable means above all accepting uncertainty and reacting flexibly to new requirements. So just imagine that, for example, another topic is now given priority. Another one than before. Being adaptive then means communicating transparently which tasks need to be paused now when I prioritize this other topic so that I don't continue to do everything as before, which would immediately apply quietly overloading myself. So in everyday life, this can also mean taking two minutes in the morning and considering for a moment, what do I absolutely have to do today? And do I know that for sure? What still has time and can still change? And as a side note, this is something that I can also help you with a lot. I, for example, use CoPilot every morning to check in on my priorities. See if something slipped my mind scanning my mailbox to do lists and planners tasks and have CoPilot make a list of musts for the day and things that could wait a little longer. This really helps me and supports me in creating orientation without everything having to be predictable at the same time. The second point we would like to discuss in more detail is how do we manage to maintain energy? So in other words, scheduling breaks, creating routines, protecting focus blocks and using mental techniques to actively manage stress. For me, energy management means, for example, building in a short mental recovery between two heavy topics. So really stepping away from my screen, stepping outside briefly, emptying the dishwasher for two minutes or getting a quick coffee in the office. So really actively taking a break. These micro recoveries noticeably reduce the cognitive load. Another routine that we often use in project is the classic team check in, but supplemented by the question, what gives me energy this week and what drains my energy? This creates awareness and it's a small but very effective moment of resilience. And this works at both the individual and team level. And in addition to what we can do personally, organizations can amplify these capabilities by actively shaping timing, clarity and psychological safety. Another important building block in this is our inner attitude. So our mindset in a rigid mindset. I'm very limited to the things I'm good at or not good at. In a growth mindset, I am free to learn continuously regardless of my initial competence. So at the end, it's about building change resilience, not only through skills, but also through cultivating the right mindset. OK, Eva, that all sounds really, really good. But what does that then actually mean in concrete terms? So what levers can we use to strengthen our resilience in a targeted manner now? And that is what we'll have a look at right now. All right. So resilience takes place on four levels or the resilience that we would like to show you can take place on four levels. And the first one in the center is actually the individual level. So each of us can work on his or her own personal resilience and we can build that individually. Then above them, we have the team level, which means that we can look at it together in a structured way. So how can we as a team create structures together that strengthen the whole team? Then we have the leadership level. So managers who are enablers and role models. What can you do to help your teams and your organization to become more resilient? And then lastly, we have the organizational level. And here we are talking about systemic framework conditions that enable resilience. And we'll also have a few examples for that. And why do we actually have this set up? Well, change fatigue is rarely caused by one big thing. It's caused by many small and poorly timed changes. So they are all happening at all of those four levels at the same time. And the most effective measures that we have, they combine all four levels. So the personal capacity, then the team cohesion, the leadership behavior, and ideally also the organizational control. And this is exactly where resilience arises also for us in our everyday life. If we then start on the individual level, we would like to give you three suggestions on what you can do. The first one is that you can take deliberate pauses. So pause deliberately and acknowledge the change that is going on around you. What does that mean concretely? It means you could consider establishing just a small, maybe 60 second self-check, asking yourself the following questions. What is it that affects me right now? And what do I need? So what affects me right now? What are the changes that are going on right now? And what would help me? What do I need? And then combine this with a micro break. If I just gave you a few examples. Another way to conduct a micro break could also be to turn off your notifications. All of the phones, the Teams chat, the email notifications that are coming in. Pause them for a reasonable time so you can actually focus better. This significantly reduces your switching costs and your unconscious tensions. Second lever is that we would like to recommend you to create recovery phases and also reduce interfaces. So choose one or two micro resilience practices per day. For example, to have a conscious ritual in the morning where, as Eva just mentioned, think you think about what does your day bring and what is really important right now? And what are the things that you can push comfortably to tomorrow or on the nice to have part in your to do list? And then if you have the chance, also schedule a reflection meeting with your leader or if you have access to that with a coach, maybe once a month that you actually talk about what is going on and how much change are you experiencing? Because this will create awareness both for yourself, but also for your leader. And it will also create routine and support. Thirdly, we would like to encourage you to spark impulses and shape conversations. And that is a quite an interesting shift that some of us need to do because we can have a tendency of saying, well, I can't do this or I don't know how to to do this or I can never actually have focus time because my calendar is always always booked. Try instead to use growth language. So say something like I'm learning how to consciously take breaks or I'm practicing introducing focus time instead of I can't do that. These are small linguistic shifts that can actually help you change your own attitude, but also the awareness and the attitude of your conversation partners. These were the personal levers. Now let's have a look at the team level and what you can do there. And also here we would like to encourage you to ensure focus and use breaks. So we know we said it before on an individual level, but now what does this mean on a team level? You could, for example, within your team define meeting free time slots. For example, Wednesday morning, no meetings or Friday afternoon, no meetings. We're just sitting and doing focus work. And I know that many of you will think now, yeah, but that's unrealistic. I'm always getting invitations for exactly that time. And yes, it's hard, but it's actually manageable to also get other people to start to learn that. Ah, this team never has meetings on Wednesday mornings. So they also will stop sending you invitations on Wednesday mornings. Give it a chance, practice it a few weeks and figure out whether this can make a difference for you. Then on the team level, you can also introduce stop rules and clarify stability anchors. What do we mean by that? When you have your next team meeting, do this round of what is the change there? What are the changes that are actually around us right now that have an impact on us? And are all of these changes and activities and projects really, really important? Or are there a few that only create noise? And if we put them on a stop list, it actually won't hurt that much. And then create that stop list. Put a few of these noise makers or activities down there that otherwise just take some focus from you. And the second thing, when a lot of changes are actually going on, then one thing that helps us is to think about the things that are not changing. And this is what we mean with stability anchors. So think about what remains constant, what values, what core processes, what routines do we uphold? Maybe it is that we, despite everything that is going on, we still have our nice team meetings every Tuesday morning at 10. Talk about it. What stays the same and what is important? And then lastly, the third lever, introduce team routines and create orientation. So define some team rules for focus and accessibility and break. So taking everything that we just talked about and put it all together. Agree with each other what you want to do and especially also establish some common rituals. For some teams, it's really good. And I know that agile teams are also practicing this a lot. But it can be very nice to check in on Mondays and say, what is the plan for the week? And then again, check in Friday around noon or afternoon to figure out how much have we accomplished and how was this week? Because this provides support and orientation for everyone, especially when a lot is changing around you. So those were the individual levers and the team levers. And now Eva is going to share a few more for the managers across here. Awesome. Thank you, Caroline. So if you are a manager, these three levers are particularly important for you. So let's look at the first one. Practice two way communication and act as a role model. What does that mean? Doing regular check ins with your team and asking for context, energy and clarity. So really being the one asking those questions to check in with your team. And it means exemplifying resilience yourself. So show your team how you deal with uncertainty, how you take breaks and how you set priorities. Sometimes this seems like an easy thing and, you know, thinking, you know, they know they can consider it themselves. But it really helps talking about it and sharing personal insights and tips and tricks on that. So really being a role model and talking about it as well. I, for example, had one one previous leader who then once shared her outlook calendar with me and then she just showed me, you know, this is how I set those breaks. This is how I prioritize and really making it as concrete as possible can help a lot. Second lever, set priorities and actively manage the workload. So to do this, you as a manager should protect your team from organizational noise and filter out the noise to identify what matters most in order to then set clear priorities and communicate them transparently. And I know this is not easy at all times. But being transparent with your team, looking at what, you know, what is it that we have and how can we set priority and priorities together can really help. So this is important. This task is less important. And we are deliberately not doing that right now, for example, really putting it into categories. Also actively letting go of things and deprioritizing tasks. The third lever is strengthen collaboration and anchor participation. So you can do this by, for example, creating psychological safety. So a space where people are allowed to ask questions, make mistakes and express their uncertainty as well. Also involve the team and decisions by practicing co-creation and planning change, not behind closed doors, but with the people who have to implement them as well. It is also okay to mention that you as a leader might not have all the answers at the moment, but really, you know, taking them into this consideration process and talking about, you know, what is it that we can do next together. And in the end, it helps to make it measurable. In other words, to actively anchor these topics in your leadership KPIs, for example. So let's jump to the last level we want to look at now, which is the organizational level. These three levers are crucial for your organization. First one, managing the change portfolio and defining guardrails. So it is important to visibly control the portfolio and to run fewer initiatives in parallel and sequence them deliberately instead. It helps to plan quarterly and to build in short rest windows in between all of these changes. So to not have a major new change starting at the same time. This gives people time to take a deep breath, process and then continue. It really helps to have an overview on that. Second lever, anchoring participation and living co-creation. On the one hand, it is important to name change agents. So people in the organization who can support and drive this change forward and involve them in the process at an early stage. So these can be people from different areas who act as bridge builders, you know, also communicators taking people along the change, helping them to thrive and navigate through the change. On the other hand, it is advisable to hand over the implementation planning to the front line. So to those who have to live with the change because they know best how it can work and how they can deal with it. The third one, strengthen absorption capacity and implement change roadmap. So really visualize the initiatives on a large change roadmap that shows which initiatives are currently underway, who they affect, when they start and when they end. So this map makes the total load visible and enables conscious control. Another idea is to add a simple load traffic light per area, for example, green, yellow, red to detect and smooth peaks. This allows you to proactively steer before the teams run into exhaustion, for example. And if you remember the client example, I have initially talked about with the four big change initiatives within 24 months. After those two years, the leaders noticed that the engagement was dropping. The priorities felt very unclear. And whenever change was announced, the energy in the organization went down completely. So people weren't operating or openly resisting it. They were actually very tired. And employees said things like, let's wait, this will pass, it will go away. And managers spend more and more time explaining change than delivering the results. So change was happening, but without a clear ownership. And the turning point was that instead of starting the next initiative, we helped the leadership to realize this wasn't a motivational problem. It was change fatigue caused by too much, too unclear and never really finishing things. So what have we changed? We have reduced and clarified. So all initiatives were put on one page. And I think that was a very strong sign because they noticed, okay, I don't even, I didn't even know that all of those things are happening in our organization at the same time. So really giving them a good overview on the picture of what is actually going on in this organization. So leaders really clearly communicated afterwards. These are the three things that really matters now. They aligned on that. And the leaders shifted their role. So from selling change to helping teams make sense of it, openly acknowledging the overload and the real trade offs. And they treated resilience as a system issue. So teams build small habits around focus, recovery and letting go of work that no longer matters. And what they actually noticed, what has improved was that the organization didn't slow down change, but it regained the capacity to actually absorb the change. So the clarity increased again, the cynicism decreased and teams actually started taking ownership again. So the key learning for that organization was that change resilience isn't about asking people to be stronger. It's about changing how change is being led and managed. So after everything that Caro and I have shared with you in the last few minutes, please take a moment for yourself to think about which level you might want to address first tomorrow. So think of where do you feel the most pressure at the moment, for example, where do you have the greatest influence and what can you do differently starting as of tomorrow? And as a reminder, we'll send you a handout with all the levers after the webinar. And now in a moment, we will also have the opportunity for a short Q&A. So if you sit with a few questions right now after everything that we have said, then just type a question or two into the chat and we will address them in a moment. But in the meantime, let's recap. So we hope that you are actually leaving with the following key takeaways from today. The first one should be hopefully that you are not alone. No, change fatigue is a systemic phenomenon and not a personal failure. About one third of employees experience change fatigue and organizations are experiencing a record change load at the moment. So the exhaustion is understandable and very, very real. The second thing is we also really hope that you have learned that resilience can be trained. It's something that we can train individually and on an organizational level. So it's not a character trait or something that you're born with, but it's something that you can build up over time by taking some conscious choices and incorporating some practices into your daily work. And then the third thing we would like to leave you with is that we want to encourage you to really start small because impact comes from micro moments and not the big programs. So start with a level, one level. It could be maybe your individual level or the team level, and then start with one of the levers that we have talked about. Maybe it's a small routine. Maybe it's about some notification free work time, focus time that you can start to implement and incorporate into your daily actions and also have some conscious breaks. And that can make a noticeable difference already. And yeah, now we're looking forward to your questions if you have any. But right now, ah, yes. One question from Ida. Do you have a best practice on how to measure building change resilience, seeing the needle moving in the right direction? So how do we measure it? I think if I just give it a first shot, my approach would really be on the qualitative side. So how are people's reactions changing? How are the conversations changing? As we talked about, when we talk about the next change, then in a town hall, people can go, oh, another change. And now we will hopefully then see that this heavy reaction is not coming. Do you have any other additions? I would agree in what we, for example, did with the client example that I have shared with you is that we actually also introduced and implemented ongoing surveys, very, very small ones as a rather check in questions, you could say. And the teams used those questions for their weekly team meeting. And we really use that to track and see what has changed. And also, are there other watch outs we need to consider and focus on moving forward? So that has also helped a lot. Nice. We hope that gives you a few ideas, Ida. And then Christian is asking, how do you address the need for curtailing change initiatives in an organization in a systemic way? Every department needs to implement initiatives that change our company and we can't do it all. Yes. I mean, also a very real experience that you're sharing there, Christian. Yes, we can't do it all. And yet we are expected to do it all. And I think very often it really starts with the awareness. Also, with your leaders and your leaders leaders, is everyone actually aware of all the things that you're being asked to do? And I know this can sound like a heavy conversation to have, but it's also an important conversation to have, I would argue. So starting by putting it all up, as we mentioned, maybe start small, start with your team and put up all the changes that you have on a wall and take a look at this together and then say, is this really necessary? All of this. Or can we maybe also divide and conquer who is taking what kind of change? So not everyone needs to focus on everything at all times. Mm-hmm. And or can we put a sequence into it and not, you know, start with everything at the same time? And I would really like to underline what Caro has said, put it on a wall, put it in writing, because it really helps to have an overview and to see that, you know, the picture, the full picture of all the change initiatives going on. And that can have a strong effect rather than just talking about it. It might appear like, oh, you know, I know you have a lot, but really seeing it black and white can support your argumentation a lot in that case. Yes. Yes. And if you are curious and just want to have a chat with us about this, or also if you want to work with us on your change resilience, then let us know. We are very, very happy if you just want to check in for a coffee or have some more questions that you didn't dare writing down right now. So let's stay in touch and tell us about what is actually occupying you. And then we hope you had a really good experience now and wish you a fabulous rest of the day. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you very much and have a good day. Thank you.