🖤 Open Works #035 How To Manage Change Fatigue

Welcome to Open Works. Every edition we solve a ‘people and culture’ problem crowd-sourced from the Open Org Community of 480+ Startup and Scale-up People Leaders.

This edition is sponsored by peoplemetrics.fyi–the benchmarking platform for scale-up people leaders.

Get instant access to verified data from 600+ startups and scale-ups across 18 x people and talent metrics. Gain the insights to make smarter decisions and give stakeholders the context they crave.

📚️ Recent Editions

If you’re new round here, not yet a subscriber or you straight up missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

💻️ Edition 34: Tech Hiring SOS! How To Increase Candidate Quality – practical sourcing tactics and hidden gems.

🤖 Edition 32: Make My Company AI Fluent, Bye – practical ways you can increase your team and organisation’s AI chops.

🤦 Edition 31: When Performance Feels Like A Process Not A Practice – a framework to iterate on your performance product.

💭 This Week’s People Problem

🖤 What Be Going On?

If you reduce this right down it’s a system under strain.

Some people are overloaded and burning out.

Some are stuck in change fatigue, overwhelmed by too many pivots and not enough clarity.

Others? Well they’ve probably just emotionally exited. Checked out. Gone.

This is a signal your org design, operating pace, and change habits need a reset.

Let’s dive in.

🧭 3 Distinct Signals. One Systemic Issue

Based on a few community conversations we’ve had on this recently, I think it’s quite common to conflate Burnout, Change Fatigue and Disengagement.

I think about each like this:

📌 Important: These signals aren’t personality traits or performance issues. They’re adaptive responses to a broken environment.

Burnout is what happens when people care too much for too long without relief.

Change fatigue is about feeling like “I can’t absorb another shift without a break.”

Disengagement is the final break point: checking out when you lose purpose, trust or agency.

🔧 Our Take On How To Approach The Design Problem

I don’t think this is about about launching an “anti-burnout initiative” because that’d be falling into the trap of “treating the symptom not the cause”.

So instead:

1. Codify How You Roll Out Change (It’ll Reduce Half the Noise)

Right now, change = chaos. You need to create consistency in how change shows up, even if the content is volatile.

4WS: Introduce a simple, shared change pattern:

Every change, every re-org, every new strategy pivot, every shift in OKRs gets 4 Ws from leadership:

• What’s changing?

• What’s not changing?

• Why this change now?

• What are you expected to do differently?

My personal favourite way to do this:

1. CXO Video + Wiki memo + slack message (4WS)

2. Leadership AMA (Townhall sli.do)

3. Team level AMA (CXO goes team by team and pairs with team lead)

2. Reduce Stress with Built-In Recovery Windows

I don’t mean relying on managers to “encourage rest”, but rather about baking in defaults instead:

• 48-hour cooldowns after major pushes - no meetings, just deep work or recovery

• Mid-quarter “debt days” with protected space to sort process/tech debt, reset focus

• Post-fundraise deep work weeks - no strategy shifts, just breathing room

• “Nothing net-new” Fridays once a month

📌 If you can’t afford this? IMO You’re over-scoping or under-prioritising. Recovery is a strategy cost, not a perk.

3. Lock in Some Stability at the Edges

When everything changes, teams, goals, managers, direction…people lose their grip.
To stay fast and stable, try and:

• Keep manager—>report lines consistent wherever possible

• Don’t kill rituals under pressure. Stand-ups, retros demos and 1:1s are mental anchors. Protect them.

📌 If you must change structure, give teams agency in how they adapt. Ownership through #co-creation creates stability even in chaos.

4. Use Managers as Signal Amplifiers, Not Shock Absorbers

Frontline managers/team leads will see the cracks first.

Give them a shared, low-stakes check-in pattern:

• “How’s your team’s energy this week, 1–10?”

• “What feels unclear, chaotic, or unnecessary?”

• “What’s the one thing we should pause next sprint?”

Use this in retros, 1:1s, weekly team syncs, whatever already exists. Don’t add overhead, just repurpose what’s already live.

📌 Track this. Silence ≠ health.

🧯 When Someone’s Checked Out

Re-engagement starts with diagnosis, not motivation tactics. Remember this one… :-)

Ask:

• “What’s changed in how this work feels?”

• “Is there a mismatch between what you’re doing and what matters to you?”

• “What would make this feel like your work again?”

If they’ve drifted because of fit, not fatigue…offer a scoped transition, a new problem to own, or an off-ramp with dignity.

📌 Change is hard enough, you cannot afford people who feel like passengers or worse: saboteurs.

🛠️ Next Steps

1️⃣ Run a focused listening tour. Ask:

• “I feel energised by my work.”

• “I understand recent changes and why they happened.”

• “I feel connected to our mission.”

2️⃣ Map recent change volume

• Track team-level changes in structure, manager, mission, and KPIs over the past 3-6 months. Look for patterns.

3️⃣ Coach managers to spot early signs Equip them with questions like:

• “What feels unclear or too much right now?”

• “How’s your energy this week, 1-10?”

4️⃣ Create a ‘recovery rhythm’

• Introduce short rest periods post-sprint or post-change. Protect stable rituals (stand-ups, retros, etc.) and reporting lines.

5️⃣ Audit and simplify priorities

• De-scope low-impact work.

• Focus on fewer, clearer goals that give people direction and purpose.

📚 Good Reads

📖 Burnout Risk Factors Audit - Bex Spiller

📖 Thriving in change presentation - Tibi Gonzalez

🤓 Want to Get Your Current “People Problem” Featured?

We’re here for the trickiest challenges you’ve got. Hit reply to this email, and let us know what’s keeping you up at night, and we’ll feature next week anonymously!

🖤 John & Adam

🖤 Psst! Are You Part Of The Open Org Community Yet?

Well goodness my friend, you should be! 😉 

Join 480+ startup and scale-up People & Talent leaders in Slack, and get exclusive access to twice-monthly live events (roundtables and guest firesides), quarterly hackathons, and direct support from Adam and me.

With 🧊 & 🔥 

John & Adam

👉️ Know someone who’d love this newsletter? Forward it their way so they don’t miss out, and make my day whilst you’re at it! 🙂