Every time a big change rolls out, someone says it.
“People are tired. It’s change fatigue.”
But let’s be honest. People aren’t tired of change. They’re tire of how change is being done to them.
ERP Projects, in particular, are notorious for triggers this narrative. After months of design workshops, testing, and steering committee meetings, leaders start to see resistance and assume employees have hit their limit. The truth is, most of that resistance isn’t fatigue at all. It’s feedback.
Fatigue is a Signal, not a Symptom
In a utility, our people have weathered storms, literally and figuratively. They’ve adapted through regulatory shifts, safety mandates, new tech rollouts, and changing leadership priorities. These are professionals built for endurance.
So when they start to disengage, it’s rarely because they can’t handle one more change. It’s because the meaning behind the change got lost.
Maybe they’ve seen initiatives come and go. Maybe they’ve invested energy into “new ways of working” that never stuck. Maybe they don’t understand how this ERP system, or new digital platform, connects to the company’s mission of safety, reliability, and serving customers.
That’s not fatigue. That’s caution.
We Don’t Burn Out from Change. We Burn Out from Uncertainty.
Change fatigue is often what happens when communication is reactive instead of consistent. When decisions feel invisible. When “transparency” comes through filtered slides after everything’s already been decided.
When that happens, people stop investing energy. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re tired of claring without clarity.
If you think of change as a psychological energy exchange, every unanswered question drains the batter a little more. Every mixed message does the same. ERP transformations are marathon efforts, and if leaders don’t keep meaning charged, even the best teams will lose power.
Resistance is a Mirror
Here’s a hard truth: what we call “resistance” is often just an organization holding up a mirror.
When employees push back, delay, or disengage, they’re usually signaling a gap… in trust, in understanding, or in alignment. Those behaviors are messages:
- “I don’t see the connection.”
- “I don’t feel heard.”
- “I don’t believe this will make my job easier.”
If we treat those reactions as defiance, we miss the opportunity to learn from them. But if we treat them as data, we can adjust… not just our message, but our methods.
In a digital transformation world, that might look like:
- A dispatcher delaying use of a new workflow because it doesn’t yet fit real operational pressures.
- A supervisor avoiding training discussions because they’ve seen too many tools change midstream.
- A field leader going quiet because they don’t feel their experience is valued in system design.
Every one of those is valuable intelligence… if we listen.
Leaders Don’t Need to Fix Fatigue: They Need to Create Safety
The antidote to “change fatigue” isn’t another pep talk or campaign. It’s psychological safety.
People can handle uncertainty if they feel heard, supported, and part of the process. They can even handles mistakes, as long as they trust that learning is part of the culture.
Leaders who acknowledge that change is hard but doable build more resilience than those who pretend everything’s fine. You don’t have to promise an easy transition. You just have to make it a safe one.
What to Ask Instead of, “Are People Fatigued?”
When the “change fatigue” narrative shows up, pause and ask:
- Have we over-communicated tasks and under-communicated meaning?
- Have we celebrated progress or just announced milestones?
- Have we closed the loop with feedback, or let it disappear into a SharePoint void?
- Have we acknowledged the emotional load of change, or brush it off with “it’s just part of the job”?
Nine times out of ten, what looks like fatigue traces back to one of those gaps.
Final Thought
If we want our ERP transformation (or any transformation) to succeed, we need to stop labeling human behavior as resistance and start treating it as a diagnostic tool.
Change fatigue isn’t a roadblock. It’s a signal. And when we learn to read those signals, when we respond with clarity, empathy, and purpose, we don’t just get compliance. We earn commitment.
Because people aren’t tired of changing. They’re tired of holding together projects and organizations that are being led poorly.
