The five key areas of transformation fatigue
This article was featured in our Ideas to Impact newsletter. Each month we explore the ideas that create real impact with exclusive insights from our team to help accelerate your strategic business outcomes. Subscribe today to receive each issue in your inbox as soon as it’s published.
Change is inevitable, and for organizations to thrive in the modern climate they have to be able to adapt, and to keep on adapting. Gone are the days when you could grow roots and grow old – the business world is unsentimental, it’s evolving at pace and it’s your job to keep up. And that requires regular ‘transformation’, a word that can send shivers up the spine. But really, it shouldn’t.
Transformation is simply a fact of life, essential for survival. The working landscape is in constant flux, driven by tech advancement, innovation, and by the changing demands of customers, so businesses are required to adapt. The issue lies more with the organizational fatigue that has increasingly become part of the baggage of transformation – so much so that we’ve pinpointed what we see as the five key areas of ‘transformation fatigue’:
- The long wait for value
Organizations want to see value as quickly as possible, but by default, transformations have long timeframes, which can affect morale and momentum – leaving interest to wain long before the value has been realized. - More of the same old, same old
Colleagues may have already been through numerous failed attempts at transformation, so they struggle to be invested. Their experience may even tell them that if they just keep working as they always have, it’ll all go away. - Buzzwords losing their impact
Overused terms like ‘agile’ and even ‘transformation’ itself have lost some of their luster and become clichés, making them less able to rouse the masses and generate excitement. - ChangeX
Far too often, you’ll find that there are numerous layers of transformation happening simultaneously, which can muddy the waters. Without clarity, without alignment, there’s less chance of realizing actual value. - Failure fatigue
If previous change initiatives failed to deliver the expected value, organizations can simply be wary of trying again. They’ve become skeptical.
At Emergn, we pride ourselves on approaching transformation differently. We understand the importance of finding value quickly, and of arming organizations with specific tools for their specific needs – it’s never a case of ‘one size fits all’. We maintain momentum for change initiatives and give organizations the learning to keep colleagues focused on the value and the outcomes of what they are being asked to do. At Emergn, we prove why you should do the next thing. We turn transformation fatigue into enduring results.