The Frustration of Learning — Change fatigue
Our Agile Coach & ScrumMaster group recently had a conversation about how sometimes the longer people are with a company, the more frustrated they can become with various changes. Over time, it can become increasingly tough to differentiate between being frustrated about the iteration in product development and being frustrated about product development in general.
Every time a company changes direction or pivots, it requires our minds to adjust to a new — sometimes slightly, sometimes radically — different reality. Regardless of our level of understanding of the change, its necessity (its why), the change causes fatigue.
People who are with one company for a longer period of time (which is something we both want and encourage), the more likely they are to be affected by this. This sad irony is what bothers me the most: change fatigue often affects the most loyal and the most knowledgeable people the most.
But is that really the case or was it just a feeling?
We discussed this further, dissecting each others thoughts and came to some realisations:
- It is impossible to know what a final product offering will look like. Thus, changing often is important.
- To get closer to something useful, teams need to build and release, then test and measure.
- As a result, we learn something essential about our target market or directly acquire market share.
- For the next step we need to build and release again, iterating on our offering.
- This comes with potentially rebuilding — or even undoing — some of the things done previously.
- Undoing and letting go of previously built stuff and experiences can hurt.
It’s not that we do not want to do great new things — we do. Greatness requires us to take risks, but that doesn’t mean these risks always pay off. Based on how we were treated when these risks turned out well, and more importantly when they became issues, can allow us to be biased and potentially more change averse.
Effects of change fatigue
- We realised that due to this frustration we tend to overlook the good things we are currently doing and have achieved. After all, we are still there. Which means most of our pivots were essential in securing our survival as an organisation, and as a competitive company.
- A second effect is that we become more and more resistant to the next change in line, even though it might be just as essential.
- Thirdly, change fatigue can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. By being less engaged about the change (which might be the required one to succeed) a person or a group of people can contribute to the change failing.
What to do against change fatigue?
Something most good leaders do to counter change fatigue is to really elaborate on the why behind the current change, and why it is necessary. What great leaders do on top of that is to provide more context! Great leaders explain why and how the previous change brought us to where we are today, highlighting that this was no mistake. They highlight that in the light of what we knew back then, we’ve done the best thing we could have. Only with that context is it easy to see the current change as an iteration, not as a fix or a cover up.
That kind of context will help us appreciate that we have come this far, which was only possible because those early products were successful.
We realised that due to frustration caused by change fatigue we tend to overlook the good things we are currently doing and have done. This reads a bit like whataboutism: “This is bad, but come on, look at this other thing, that’s a good thing right there.” Only looking away can’t remedy change fatigue, but we have to retain a healthy balance.
We shouldn’t apologise for undoing things or changing as we go, because of something we learned. We mustn’t worry about ‘not having foreseen’ how the product offering needed to look for the second or third iteration. There is no correct solution, feature, product or no silver bullet during the ‘concept phase’.
How we have most recently dealt with the first signs of change fatigue is by reiterating our company strategy in tailored sessions for everybody in the company. As usual, we do record these sessions for later reference. I personally replay them at 1.25x playback speed, pausing when something requires me to think about it for a moment.
This whole conversation started around the time we played the board game Playing Lean 2, and evaluating whether it’s a useful exercise for our Focus Teams. The result: Yes, it very much is!
Further reading and links:
- In the process of writing this piece, I’ve read a good dozen articles on change fatigue. Most of them advertising some product(s) on pages of consultants and coaches. Only one I found helpful without promoting magical cures: https://thinktransition.com/change-fatigue/
- Change fatigue gets more frequent these days, since we work in a VUCA world, full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. This should be met with #Vision #Understanding #Clarity and #Agility and a whole lot more of human-centric values.
