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Last week’s issue: Teach them to Fish
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How to Lead Teams Through Endless Transformation Without Burning Out
What you'll learn today:
Why creating stability during change is more important than staying flexible everywhere
How honest acknowledgement of struggle builds trust and momentum
Practical ways to protect recovery time when there's no "slow season"
A sustainable approach to leading through change that actually work
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A colleague told me recently, "I feel like we're always in the middle of something. I can't remember the last time things just stayed still."
She wasn't complaining about any particular initiative. The reorganisation made sense. The new technology was necessary. The strategy shift was overdue. It was the accumulation that was wearing her down, the sense that as soon as one change landed, another began.
If that resonates, you're not alone. We've all heard the advice about adaptability being the new competitive advantage, about being comfortable with ambiguity, about embracing change. But here's what those articles rarely mention: people are exhausted. Your teams are exhausted. And no amount of inspirational messaging about "thriving in uncertainty" changes the fact that constant transformation takes a real toll.
The traditional change management playbook doesn't work anymore because it was built for episodic change, a beginning, middle, and end, followed by a return to stability. That's not the world we're operating in. Change isn't a phase we're going through. It's the environment we live in now.
Which means our job as leaders has fundamentally shifted. We're not here to make teams excited about the next change or to convince them to love disruption. We're here to help people function sustainably within an environment that never stops moving. That requires a different approach, one that's more honest about the costs and more intentional about what we protect.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
1. Create Islands of Stability
When everything's shifting, the instinct is to stay flexible everywhere: "We need to be agile, keep all options open, be ready to pivot." But this creates organisational vertigo where nothing feels solid.
Instead, be deliberate about what you hold steady. These become the ground under people's feet when everything else is moving.
What this looks like:
Keep your meeting cadence consistent during transitions
Protect core working hours and collaboration norms
Sequence changes instead of piling them on simultaneously
Tell your team explicitly: "Here's what's changing, and here's what I'm protecting"
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I watched a director maintain her team's schedule and one-on-ones religiously during a major systems migration. While the technology was in flux, these rhythms stayed constant. Six months later, her team cited those "protected constants" as what got them through. They weren't shielded from change, but they had ground to stand on.
The specifics matter less than the intentionality. You're not freezing everything in place, you're making conscious choices about what stays stable so people can direct their adaptation energy toward what actually needs to change.
2. Name the Cost
Most change communications follow a pattern: here's what we're doing, why it matters, and the exciting opportunity ahead. What's missing? Any acknowledgement that change itself has a cost, even when it's necessary.
People are staying late to learn new systems, rebuilding workflows they'd perfected, and navigating confusion about new processes. When you don't acknowledge this, it creates a strange dissonance between their lived experience and your "everything's great" message.
What this sounds like:
"This transition will be messy for the next month, and I know that's frustrating when you were just hitting your stride."
"Learning this platform takes time from work you actually care about. That's a real tradeoff we're making."
"I know many of you are exhausted by how much has changed this year."
This honesty doesn't demoralise people, it validates their experience and builds trust. You're signalling that you operate in the same reality they do. Paradoxically, when people feel seen in their struggle, they often find it easier to move forward. What's truly exhausting is pretending everything's easy when it clearly isn't.
3. Protect Recovery Time
Here's what makes perpetual change unsustainable: there's no off-season. The next change starts before the last one lands, and people never get time to consolidate what they've learned.
If you can't control the pace of change itself, become fiercely protective of recovery time within it.
What this looks like:
Lighten other expectations during high-change periods, if you're implementing a new CRM, maybe this quarter isn't the time for that experimental project
Protect boundaries that would otherwise erode: no meetings after 4pm during implementations, weekends stay clear during reorganisations
Use "change sprints": three weeks of intense adaptation, followed by two weeks where you explicitly don't start anything new and focus only on making what you just changed actually work
Give people time to metabolise change, not just experience it
One leader I know uses this simple rule: "We don't layer changes." One major initiative at a time, with breathing room built in between. It sounds impossible until you realise the alternative, doing everything simultaneously, doesn't actually work faster. It just breaks people.
The Bottom Line
Your teams don't need you to make change exciting. They need you to make it survivable.
The leaders who'll thrive in this environment aren't the ones manufacturing enthusiasm for the fiftieth initiative. They're the ones creating conditions where people can keep adapting without losing themselves in the process.
That's not about doing less, it's about being more intentional with what you protect, what you acknowledge, and when you give people space to breathe.
This might be the most important leadership work there is right now.
Thanks for reading!