Article
Organizations that reorganize, replatform, and reposition themselves several times in a single year are not unusual anymore. What is unusual is doing it without a measurable drop in discretionary effort somewhere around the third announcement.
Change fatigue is often described as a communication problem. It is closer to a predictability problem. People can absorb a great deal of change when a few things stay fixed: how decisions get made, who they report to, what good performance means, and whether commitments made to them last quarter still hold.
We use the word stagility with clients to name that combination. Agility in what the company does, stability in how it treats the people doing it. The practical work is identifying the small set of constants worth defending and then defending them publicly, especially during the transitions where they are most tempting to suspend.
Leaders who manage this well tend to over-invest in two unglamorous habits: closing every change they open, and telling teams what is not changing at the same moment they announce what is. Both cost nothing and both buy the credibility the next transition will require.
