Credit to VitalikRadko
Congratulations! Your CEO just discovered AI. Your CIO just discovered agile. Your CHRO just discovered mindfulness.
And your team just discovered Indeed.com…
(Right now you're either laughing because it’s funny or crying because you know it’s true.)
Sound familiar? Every Monday brings another "exciting transformation" that will "revolutionize how we work." Another initiative to add to the pile. Another shift in what you do and how you do it.
And you can feel it in the room - that heavy silence where enthusiasm used to live.
Not because your people hate progress, but because they're exhausted from being asked to embrace the seventh "game-changing initiative" in three years. Each one promised to make everything better. Each one just made everything... different.
Here's what twenty years of teaching improv to organizations has taught me: It's not the change that's exhausting your people. It's that we keep “doing change” TO them instead of WITH them.
The Real Problem (And Why It Matters)
I am a professional humorist, I have performed and taught improv comedy for over 30 years, I make my living this way, and sometimes when I tell one of my kids one of my amazing “dad jokes,” they pause, give me “the look,” then go back to whatever they were doing.
You know that look?
It’s the same one employees give their leaders during change announcements.
They don't push back. They just look, nod, and go back about their business.
That's not buy-in. That's burnout.
See, resistance can actually be healthy. When people say "Yes, but what about..." they're engaged. They care enough to fight for something better. The real warning sign? Crickets. Compliance without conviction. Everyone just going through the motions.
I call it change apathy - and it's the terminal stage of change fatigue.
I once worked with a group of IT professionals who'd been identified as "high-potential leaders." But when we talked about change, they didn't sound like future leaders. They sounded tired. They talked about motivational posters appearing in stairwells, new initiatives every quarter, constantly being told to "do better" and "be different."
(They did a drawing exercise to depict their “current situation” and one team drew a whip-bearing monster that represented their leader giving them yet another directive…)
Instead of feeling rewarded for having high potential, they felt criticized for not doing enough.
That's when I realized: We're not leading change. We're inflicting it.
Why Your People Are Actually Exhausted
Here’s the thing about change that nobody talks about: If I told you tomorrow you’re getting a corner office, a 30% raise, and Fridays off, would you be exhausted by that change?
Of course not. You’d be doing cartwheels. (Okay, mental cartwheels. We’re not all gymnasts and I don’t want you to hurt yourself. I literally did something to my back by…standing in place too long. Yes, I hurt myself by NOT MOVING. So let’s keep the cartwheels mental..)
So it’s not change itself that exhausts us. It’s the uncertainty. It’s the feeling of having change done TO us rather than WITH us. It’s the seventh “transformation initiative” in three years where nothing actually transformed except everyone’s patience.
My friend Alex, a longtime executive at ExxonMobil, figured this out when he had to merge two departments. Instead of the usual “Here’s how it’s going to be” announcement, he did something radical.
He asked questions. Real ones. Not “Any questions?” at the end of a PowerPoint. But genuine curiosity about how people thought the merge should work.
The result? People who should have been territorial became collaborative. Why? Because they weren’t defending against change - they were designing it.
The “Yes, But” Death Spiral
Every time you respond to an employee’s concern with “Yes, but…” you’re not acknowledging their point. You’re dismissing it.
“Yes, but we need to hit our Q4 targets.”“Yes, but the board already decided.”“Yes, but that’s not how we do things.”
My personal favorite? “Yes, but we've always done it this way.” That is the point when they have officially thrown in the towel.
Each “but” is a tiny paper cut. And death by a thousand paper cuts is still death.
The alternative? “Yes, and…”
“Yes, I hear your concern about the timeline, AND let’s figure out how to make this work without burning everyone out.”
See the difference? One shuts down. One opens up.
Your 4-Step Framework for Transformation
Here’s how to transform change fatigue into genuine excitement:
1. Start with Awareness (Not Announcements)
Before you unveil the next initiative, have real conversations. Not town halls where you talk for 45 minutes and leave five minutes for questions. I mean actual dialogue.
Walk around. Chat at the coffee machine. Ask: “What’s working? What’s not? What would you change if you could?”
Then - and this is crucial - actually listen. Don’t defend. Don’t explain. Just listen and take notes.
If you do respond, make sure you “Yes, And” your responses. Don’t say, “yes, but” and argue with their ideas. Or worse, “yes, but” their feelings! Just say, “yes, and” and acknowledge, validate, and dig deeper.
2. Shift the Questions
Stop asking “How do we get through this change?”
Start asking “How do we USE this change to finally fix what’s been bugging us?”
The objective is to shift everyone’s focus from how much of a pain the change will be to what possibilities the change opens up.
That new ERP system everyone’s dreading? What if it’s the excuse to finally streamline those 47 approval processes that make everyone crazy?
The key here is that you, as the leader, can’t give them this answer. You have to ask them the questions and let them come up with the answers.
3. Shrink the Elephant
You know why most New Year’s resolutions fail by January 15th? Because “transform your entire life” is exhausting just to think about.
Same with organizational change. You can’t eat an elephant in one bite. (Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s not pretty.) Instead of massive rollouts, try tiny experiments.
Don’t implement AI across the entire organization. Ask everyone to try it for ONE task next week and report back. Small step. Low risk. High learning.
4. Make Them the Heroes (Not the Victims)
Here’s the brutal truth: You can’t “Yes, but” people into saying “Yes, and.”
If you want a “Yes, and” culture, you need to model it. When someone raises a concern, don’t defend. Dig deeper. “Yes, that’s a valid concern, AND what would need to be true for this to work?”
Let your people own the HOW even when leadership owns the WHAT.
The Improv Secret That Changes Everything
You want to know one of the secrets of great improv? Focus solely on the only thing you can control: your one next step. Not the whole scene. Not where the story’s going. Just your next contribution.
(When you try to plan too far ahead you end up with terrible improv, sometimes involving the world’s most boring long-form about Kool-Aid. While a reviewer is in the audience. True story; I’ll tell you about it some time.)
This is the antidote to “change overwhelm.” You don’t need the whole journey mapped out. You just need the next small step.
When people can see just one step ahead - and have a say in where that foot lands - magic happens. Exhaustion transforms into energy. Compliance becomes creativity.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Imagine your next Monday morning meeting. Instead of announcing the new customer service platform with a 47-slide deck, you say:
“We’re exploring a new platform. But first, I want to hear what drives you crazy about our current system. What would you fix if you had a magic wand?”
Then you actually incorporate their input. Not necessarily all of it - that’s likely impossible. But enough that they see their fingerprints on the solution.
Suddenly, it’s not YOUR change initiative. It’s THEIRS.
The Bottom Line
Your people aren’t afraid of change. They’re afraid of being changed.
They’re not resistant to new ideas. They’re resistant to having ideas imposed on them.
They’re not too tired to innovate. They’re too tired from pretending to care about innovations that ignore their input.
The difference between change fatigue and change excitement isn’t in the change itself. It’s in whether your people feel like victims or co-creators.
So here’s my challenge: What’s one change your team is facing right now? What question can you ask WITH them instead of announcing something AT them?
Because when you get this right, change stops being something to survive and starts being the way you systematically make tomorrow better than today.
And that’s not exhausting. That’s exhilarating.
Want to transform your team’s change fatigue into innovation energy? Let’s talk about bringing these tools to your next leadership meeting or company event. Because your people deserve better than another “embrace change” PowerPoint. They deserve to be energized by possibility.
Email me or grab a spot on my calendar and let’s turn your next change initiative into a breakthrough moment.