By Janus Boye
“Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is just as predictable.
How do you motivate teams to willingly get on board?”
This is the premise for the Change Fatigue, a new book by Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker.
Released in May, the book focuses on what the authors call ‘flipping teams from burnout to buy-in.’ It addresses the foundational psychological safety domains that drive willingness to change alongside practical change facilitation techniques you can use today, regardless of where your team is starting from.
In a recent member’s call, we were joined by the two authors who, in an informal conversation, took us through what’s in the change facilitation book, and they also shared a few insights on how your team can lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change.
We also heard about how leaders can manage the pitfalls of change, but let’s start with the obvious question.
Why yet another book on change?
Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker together on stage at Content Marketing World
There are entire libraries filled with books on the topic of change, but according to Jenny and Melissa, they wrote the book because of so many teams they've worked with:
Struggle to activate their team members for change success around small changes
Scramble to find people or ask people to do the work "off the side of the desk"
Suffer through team members who are not prepared to change (and are actively resistant)
Gartner research shows that the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes in 2022 – a five-time increase over 2016. Their willingness to support these changes dropped by almost 30% in the same period. Unsurprisingly, change fatigue is a top concern for 2023 and beyond.
Also, times have changed, and new challenges have emerged. Many teams are now hybrid, with a higher bar for successful outcomes.
The book shares a strategic approach with tips to help you and your team lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change. It’s targeted at people who lead change (like introducing a new process or application in your team) to improve outcomes with their colleagues.
More specifically, the book is focused on change facilitation. That’s a subset of change management that focuses on communicating change and engaging team members to ensure they are ready to change and have the support they need. Importantly, these team members also help craft the change narrative to be as persuasive to stakeholders as possible.
In brief, as the authors said in the call:
“It’s really a book intended for people who want to make change happen, but don’t want to be change managers”
Five ways leaders sabotage change
An interesting concept in the book is how leaders sometimes work hard to make sure change doesn’t actually happen. As Jenny has previously been quoted:
“Even most well-meaning leaders can accidentally find themselves engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors”
Here’s the five ways listed in the book where this can happen:
Narrowly defining the problem. As a leader, you are rewarded for achieving company goals and likely motivated by reducing friction in your own job. This in turn, often means that you easily focus on company objectives or your convenience over broader concerns.
Forcing change, also known as “The ‘because I said so’ style of change.” This often comes from frustrated leaders who won’t take the time to align goals (see #1) and just want what they want. It can also come from a senior leader’s mandate.
Silencing resistance. This is the ‘We all agree, right?’ approach. Nodding heads or silence in an all-staff meeting does not equate to buy-in, but many leaders will accept this cursory ‘agreement’ as permission and even enthusiasm to proceed.
Shuffling priorities and failing to build capacity. This falls into the ‘ASAP’ style of leading change. In this reactive leadership style, new work gets added to the top of the priority list without other items coming off the list, building in a permanent feeling of overwhelm and just asking for staff burnout.
Neglecting healthy team norms and psychological safety. As they said in the call, most overestimate the team's psychological safety. Leaders who don’t invest time creating a high-functioning team that welcomes feedback and rises to new challenges will find themselves lost. PS: The book lets you benchmark your team’s psychological safety.
Build your change muscle
As former US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said,
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
The book comes with practical change facilitation techniques you can use today. You can also find a multi-step process to create a clear vision and change plan for new projects. It includes steps like:
Identify the scope and the impact on team members
Sell the vision
A big focus on communication
Consider the team culture
Ideally, you have team members with the necessary experience and enough staff to execute the project easily. In reality, you often have to start the change without sufficient resources. In this situation, the book also has solid advice (hint: look for stakeholders to help you).
Finally, on the book website - changefatigue.com - you can also find a list of helpful resources, including an Idea Deathmatch, a Change Summary slide and also a comprehensive Stakeholder Assessment Matrix Airtable template.
Learn more about change facilitation
Change facilitators work closely with change leaders to refine the scope and timelines based on feedback from stakeholders and best practices. On smaller initiatives, say projects without a dedicated change management team, change facilitators bridge the gap between change leaders and stakeholders
The conversation on change also continues in our peer groups and at our upcoming conferences.
To learn more, download the deck (PDF) from the talk or you can even lean back and enjoy the entire recording below.