Understanding Organisational Energy

Organisational energy is the collective capacity of employees to take action, drive change, and sustain momentum. It encompasses physical, emotional, and cognitive dimensions, each playing a critical role in how teams navigate transformation. Unlike resources such as time and budget, energy is dynamic—it can be depleted through excessive demands or replenished through strategic interventions.

The Marathon Mindset: Pacing and Breathing Spaces

Transformation is a long journey, not a sprint. Like seasoned marathon runners, organisations must be intentional about pacing and ensuring adequate recovery points along the way. Leaders often push for rapid results, but sustained transformation requires:

Phased Implementation: Breaking down transformation into manageable phases with defined milestones.
Strategic Pauses: Allowing teams to absorb changes, reflect on progress, and recalibrate before moving to the next stage.
Energy Checks: Regularly assessing engagement levels, stress indicators, and feedback to adjust the pace accordingly.

Neglecting these aspects leads to fatigue, resistance, and disengagement—ultimately derailing transformation efforts.

Awareness of Existing Capabilities and Change History

Before embarking on a transformation journey, organisations must understand their baseline. Awareness of existing capabilities, ways of working, and historical transformation experiences provides predictive indicators of how change should be approached.

Key Considerations:

Past Change Successes and Failures: What has worked and what hasn’t? Understanding past patterns helps anticipate potential resistance or enablers.
Current Workload and Fatigue Levels: Are employees already stretched with existing initiatives? Overloading teams will compromise focus and execution quality.
Organisational Culture: Some cultures thrive on rapid change, while others require gradual adoption. Aligning transformation efforts with cultural realities is critical.

By assessing these factors, leaders can tailor transformation strategies to fit the organisation’s energy levels and capacity.

Building Organisational Stamina: Start Small, Scale Up

Just as athletes build endurance through progressive training, organisations must strengthen their transformation muscle over time. This means introducing smaller changes first to test resilience and capability before scaling up to more complex shifts.

How to Build Organisational Stamina:

Start with Pilot Initiatives: Test new ways of working in controlled environments before expanding.
Gradually Increase Complexity: Move from small process improvements to larger-scale changes, ensuring teams adapt successfully at each stage.
Celebrate Early Wins: Recognising progress builds confidence and motivation to tackle bigger challenges.
Provide Learning Opportunities: Equip teams with skills and tools that enhance adaptability and readiness for change.

Leaders who adopt this progressive approach foster a resilient workforce that can sustain transformation efforts over time.

Teams with good change leaders or those teams with significant experience with change tend to be more able to work with greater volumes of change as well as greater complexity of change. With each change initiative, with the right structure, routines (including retro), the team’s capability can be built to be ready for larger, more complex transformations.

Balancing Focus and Intensity

Attention is a finite resource. When teams are bombarded with multiple initiatives, priorities become diluted, and execution suffers. Managing focus effectively is essential to maintaining high performance during transformation.

Strategies for Maintaining Focus:

Limit Concurrent Initiatives: Prioritise the most critical changes and sequence others to avoid overload.
Establish Clear Priorities: Ensure alignment across leadership to prevent conflicting demands on teams.
Monitor Workload and Stress Levels: Pay close attention to employee well-being and adjust intensity as needed.
Encourage Deep Work: Create space for teams to focus without constant distractions or shifting priorities.

When focus is scattered, transformation efforts lose momentum. By managing cognitive load, leaders enable employees to fully engage with and execute changes effectively.

The Importance of a Clear Plan

While agile methodologies emphasise adaptability, having a structured plan provides essential clarity for employees navigating complex change. Transformation without a roadmap leads to uncertainty, anxiety, and resistance. This does not necessarily mean that plans are locked in stone and cannot be changed. In contrast to this, having a plan provides a frame of reference, and expectations can be set that details including timeline may shift but that the high level approach remains the same.

Why a Clear Plan Matters:

Provides Direction: Employees need to know where the organisation is headed and how they fit into the journey.
Reduces Uncertainty: Even if adjustments are made, a baseline plan offers reassurance and stability.
Enhances Engagement: When people understand the “why” and “how” of transformation, they are more likely to commit.
Prepares for Change: Last-minute changes create confusion and stress—early planning allows for smoother transitions.

Balancing Planning with Agility

While plans must be flexible, abandoning structure altogether creates chaos. Leaders should:

Communicate a High-Level Roadmap: Outline key phases and milestones without overloading with unnecessary detail.
Adapt Plans Responsively: Incorporate feedback and lessons learned, adjusting course without losing sight of long-term goals.
Engage Employees in Planning: Co-creation fosters ownership and reduces resistance.

A well-structured transformation plan provides clarity and confidence, making it easier for teams to adapt and sustain change.

To ensure the optimal management of organisational energy, measurement is essential. Organisations need clear yardsticks to assess energy levels, performance, and transformation progress, allowing leaders to make informed adjustments when needed. Without measurement, it is impossible to determine whether teams are operating at an optimal pace or experiencing fatigue and disengagement.

Key Metrics to Track:

Change Impact Data: Understanding the magnitude of transformation on various teams helps adjust implementation approaches.
Balance Energy Demand and Supply: Leaders should prioritize work strategically, focusing on high-impact initiatives while minimizing unnecessary demands. Simultaneously, they should inspire teams by articulating a compelling vision that connects the various dots across changes
Change Readiness Assessments: Gauging employees’ preparedness for change ensures the right support mechanisms are in place.
Sentiment Analysis: Regular pulse surveys and feedback loops help identify resistance, concerns, and engagement levels.
Performance Metrics: Tracking productivity, efficiency, and key deliverables helps align transformation with business outcomes.
Adoption Rates: Measuring how well new processes, tools, or ways of working are being integrated ensures long-term sustainability.

By continuously monitoring these indicators, leaders can fine-tune transformation efforts, ensuring that momentum is sustained while preventing burnout and resistance.

Leading with Energy Management

The success of any transformation effort hinges on how well organisational energy is managed. Leaders must act as stewards of energy—pacing initiatives appropriately, building stamina, maintaining focus, and providing clear direction.

By treating transformation like a marathon—strategically balancing intensity with recovery, testing capabilities before scaling, and ensuring clarity—organisations can sustain momentum and achieve lasting success. Managing organisational energy is not just a leadership responsibility; it is the foundation for thriving in an ever-evolving business landscape.

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