Decision Making: Inspiration vs Desperation

Some fear of change is hard wired into our brains and beyond that people’s change thresholds vary especially when it comes to their work environment. A 2023 study by Gartner showed companies are increasing the rate of change employees must deal with up almost 80% from 2016 to 2022. And while the demand to increase an employee’s change threshold grows the converse is actually happening and the support for change has decreased from 76% to 44%. Additionally, post 2020 most people are well entrenched and/or still processing change fatigue.

So how do you maneuver change in a change resistant environment? Whether it’s you that’s experiencing change fatigue or the people you lead, ask yourself what internally is your change resistance rooted in brain physiology, or something more?

More likely than not you can put your, or your teams reaction to change into one of two buckets. One, does the change trigger desperation based feelings, such as will I lose my autonomy, will I lose my job, will I have even more work on my overloaded plate, etc. Or two, is the change triggering inspiration based feelings? It’s not hard to predict which of the options is going to make life easier, and which is going to make life harder for all involved.

How you frame up change when presenting it will ultimately lead to how people will shape it within their own internal paradigm. And while the reality of business is sometimes change is just going to be hard no matter what, your ability or your teams ability to operate out of space of inspiration rather than desperation will significantly contribute to how hard.