Change Fatigue is Real—And Everyone is Burnt Out

In April 2025, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made headlines for giving employees a one-week deadline to embrace new AI tools—or risk termination. “People were afraid of AI,” he said, “so I had to go a bit rogue.” Around the same time, Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, publicly credited generative AI with shrinking his workforce by 40%. The message from the top was clear: adapt fast—or get left behind.

This is the new face of digital transformation. And it’s exhausting everyone.

The Human Cost of Speed

While Wall Street applauds efficiency gains, the pace of change has turned day-to-day work into a pressure cooker. Especially for middle managers and senior contributors, the psychological toll is real:

• Colleagues laid off without warning.

• New AI mandates arriving weekly.

• Shifting roles, unclear expectations, and constant context switching.

This isn’t just a tech problem. It’s a nervous system problem. The people tasked with holding teams together are also absorbing fear, translating ambiguity from above, and doing so without much support. What we’re seeing isn’t resistance to change—it’s change fatigue.

And ironically, leaders are burning out too.

Why Some Leaders Default to Threat-Based Tactics

Before we point fingers, let’s zoom out. Leading through disruption is disorienting, even for seasoned executives. Most CEOs weren’t trained to facilitate transformation—they were trained to optimize performance. When faced with volatility, many fall back on instinct:

• Mandate tools.

• Cut costs.

• Speed up.

• Measure via dashboards.

This playbook isn’t evil—it’s just outdated. It reflects a leadership model born in the industrial era: one of control, efficiency, and top-down decisions. But transformation isn’t a rollout. It’s a relationship.

Why Mandating Surveys Won’t Build Culture

One CEO recently asked their entire organization to complete a weekly survey on AI adoption. While the impulse is understandable (leaders need visibility) surveys create isolated data. They don’t encourage peer learning, surface ethical concerns, or teach best practices.

There’s no shared learning, no context, no feedback loop—just compliance.

Transformation, in contrast, thrives in networks, not silos. People need safe spaces to explore what works, what doesn't, and what feels ethically ambiguous. They need to witness how their peers are adapting, and share what they’re learning.

The Science of Systems and the Myth of the Lone Leader

The late systems scientist Donella Meadows taught us that complex systems don’t change through brute force. They evolve when new patterns of behavior emerge—when people have the space to try, fail, and adapt. Peter Senge coined the term “learning organization” theory. It has been around since the 1990s. But few executive teams actually practice it.

Instead, the default assumption is that leaders must know the answers. That their job is to “drive change,” not facilitate it.

But neuroscience and behavioral psychology say otherwise. Studies on threat rigidity (Staw et al., 1981) show that fear narrows focus and reinforces the status quo. In contrast, psychological safety—championed by Harvard’s Amy Edmondson—correlates with innovation and adaptive learning.

What Real Leadership Looks Like in 2025

The best leaders right now aren’t forcing change. They’re hosting it.

They’re setting up facilitated learning environments where teams:

• Reflect on their workflow patterns

• Identify what’s worth automating and what’s worth protecting

• Build new rituals, habits, and systems that support shared goals

This is where fundamental transformation happens. Not in mandates. In micro-experiments.

Leaders who understand this are shifting from commanders to conveners. They’re creating spaces where people can be their authentic selves, take creative risks, and prototype new ways of working together.

The Path Forward: From Rigid to Regenerative

It’s easy to feel like there’s no alternative. But there is.

The Change Lab is a virtual space for adaptive leadership experimentation, where we prepare managers in nervous system literacy, ethical AI fluency, and systems-aware leadership. Tools like Life Design for Leaders, Resilience & Change Readiness, and AI Fluency & Ethical Integration are enabling teams to build not just faster ways of working, but healthier, more human ones.

Because ultimately, transformation isn’t about technology. It’s about capacity. The capacity to hold complexity, to learn in public, and to lead with curiosity instead of fear.

And the most forward-thinking leaders know: the future doesn’t need to be forced. It needs to be facilitated.

This Is Not Just a Trend—It’s a Test of Leadership

If you’ve felt uneasy about the tone of corporate change lately, you’re not alone. The problem isn’t that AI is coming too fast—it’s that human infrastructure is lagging.

We’re asking people to move at machine speed.
To produce more with fewer teammates.
To adopt new tools without shared learning, ethical guidance, or psychological safety.

And when employees don’t immediately comply, many CEOs treat resistance as defiance. But what if it’s just… unprocessed fear?

To meet this moment, leaders don’t need more dashboards or surveys.
They need spaces where people can reflect, share, and grow—together.

The best way to reduce change fatigue is to acknowledge that people are tired.

Leading Change Isn’t About Speed—It’s About Safety

This is the core thesis of seven years of rigorous field research —now published in: Human-Centered Organizational Renewal: Transformative Design Science in Action by Jessica Lowry, HCI International 2024 (Springer) Read the full chapter

The original research presents a concrete case study that supports transformation in an ethical, empathetic, and systemic manner. Through transformative design science, somatic facilitation, and behavioral insight, it demonstrates how to reduce burnout while fostering genuine organizational growth.

If you're a CEO, a Chief of Staff, or an L&D leader:

• Stop pushing harder.

• Start designing better spaces.

This is what The Change Lab is for. It’s not a class. It’s a practice space for digital transformation.