Why Change Feels Endless Now

Isabella

Quick note before we start, this episode of Team Pulse is made with AI, including our voices. Everything we discuss is based on real, cited research. You know, Jesper, I was looking at how we used to build project plans, like, even just five years ago. You had a clear start date, a middle phase, a big go live milestone, and then, well, the promise that everyone gets to go back to normal.

Jesper

Yes! The magical back to normal phase that never actually happens. It, it was this illusion that change is just a temporary bridge you cross, and then you unpack your bags on the other side.

Isabella

Right! But according to McKinsey's State of Organizations 2026 report, which surveyed over 10,000 executives, that entire mental model is completely broken. Transformation isn't something that ever finishes anymore. It is becoming a permanent condition, just continuous, overlapping waves hitting teams one after another.

Jesper

And det vil altså sige, that all our standard tools, like steering groups, classic Gantt charts, go live deadlines, they assume an end state. When there is no end state, those tools quietly stop fitting reality, and the load just accumulates on the exact same people over and over.

Isabella

And the human cost of that accumulation is staggering. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026, which covered 263,810 respondents across more than 160 countries through 2025, found global employee engagement fell to 20%. That is a five year low, costing an estimated 10 trillion dollars annually in lost productivity.

Jesper

10 trillion dollars. That is, that is massive. And you have to be ops on what is happening to the managers, too. Manager engagement dropped down to 22%. Some analysts are calling it an outright manager engagement collapse, because managers are the ones stuck catching every single wave.

Isabella

It really puts the Danish workplace context into perspective, doesn't it? We always talk about our flat hierarchies and trust based leadership as this ultimate buffer against workplace stress.

Jesper

It is a buffer, yes, trust definitely lowers the friction of change. But it is not immunity. Just because people trust you doesn't mean their nervous systems can handle infinite load. You can't just keep adding new initiatives without explicitly declaring what stops or what gets paused. You have to actively manage capacity, or people just drown in trust.

Isabella

Exactly. And that pressure on leaders is coming from very specific directions right now. Michael D. Watkins, who wrote The First 90 Days, published a piece in Harvard Business Review on June 17, 2026, titled 3 Forces Are Redefining the Transition from Manager to Leader. He argues that stepping up into enterprise leadership requires totally different muscles today.

Jesper

Yes, because the environment around them is moving so much faster. What are those three forces he calls out?

Isabella

First, generative AI adoption. Second, geopolitical instability. And third, a severely compressed leadership pipeline. People are being promoted into massive roles with far fewer preparatory experiences than leaders had a decade ago, right as the job itself became twice as complex.

Jesper

Ah, that compressed pipeline, we see that so much in Denmark. Because our structures are flat, people jump from functional roles to leading whole units very quickly, without much runway. So what new muscles does Watkins say they actually need?

Isabella

He highlights four. First, learning how to govern decision systems where humans and AI sit side by side, and being dead clear about who owns quality. Second, running dynamic strategy instead of static yearly plans. Third, designing hybrid operating models. And fourth, cutting through absolute chaos to choose just a handful of priorities.

Jesper

I, I really like that focus on quality ownership in AI systems. But let us be realistic, if you are coaching a young Danish leader who just got fast tracked, heroics won't save them. So how do they actually build those muscles on Monday morning?

Isabella

Watkins gives three very concrete questions to ask. First, where do humans and AI already decide things together in your unit, and who owns the ultimate quality? Second, what would you do differently if your core strategy assumptions changed in three months? And third, if you could keep only three priorities this quarter, which ones get dropped?

Jesper

Yes! Dropping priorities, that is where real leadership lives. If you cannot name what stops, you are not leading, you are just collecting tasks.

Isabella

That brings us to what I think is the core reframe of this whole episode. When leaders see pushback or disengagement during a transformation, they almost always call it resistance to change. But what if it isn't resistance to change at all?

Jesper

What is it then?

Isabella

It is resistance to loss. People rarely resist making things better. What they resist is losing the mastery they spent years building, losing status, losing comfortable routines, losing trusted work relationships, or losing certainty.

Jesper

Wow. Yes. What looks like stubbornness or cynicism is usually just grief for something that actually worked. And when you have continuous waves of change, you are asking people to live in endless beginnerhood. They never get to reach mastery before the ground shifts under them again. That is super træls, it is exhausting.

Isabella

Endless beginnerhood, that phrase captures it perfectly! And when executive teams treat this as a communication problem, like, oh, we just need another town hall or ten more vision slides, they actually make it worse because they are ignoring the grief.

Jesper

Right, you are trying to sell the shiny future while ignoring that their current house is being knocked down. In a trust culture, you have a massive advantage here, you can just say the quiet part out loud. A leader can literally sit down and say, here is what we are losing, and here is what we are keeping.

Isabella

Yes! Imagine if before launching any major tool or structural shift, leaders wrote down explicitly what people are being asked to give up, not just what they stand to gain. Naming the loss directly defuses so much defense mechanism before it even turns into friction.

Isabella

But to even have that conversation, you need a high level of psychological safety. We know Amy Edmondson's work in The Fearless Organization shows that team performance hinges on whether people feel safe to say, I do not know, I am struggling, or I made a mistake, without fear of penalty.

Jesper

Yes, but under continuous change and AI integration, that safety comes under immense new pressure, doesn't it?

Isabella

It really does. When everyone is forced to be a beginner over and over, and AI tools blur who actually produced the output, the temptation is to fake fluency. People try to look like experts on day one rather than admitting they are on a steep learning curve. And that hidden struggle is how change fatigue stays invisible until someone burns out or quits.

Jesper

That is a dangerous trap for flat teams. We assume because our doors are open, safety just takes care of itself. But as the pace ratchets up, safety degrades unless you protect it on purpose. You have to make struggling out loud a normalized, everyday behavior.

Isabella

So how do we synthesize all of this for leaders and teams listening right now? If we bring together the McKinsey data, Gallup, Watkins, and Edmondson, what are the core takeaways?

Jesper

First, accept that change is a permanent condition, not a project, so manage capacity and pause old work deliberately. Second, recognize that people resist loss, not change, so name what is being given up before selling the benefits. And third, protect psychological safety by making it normal to say, I am still learning this.

Isabella

Here is a practical move for your next team check in. Add one simple question to the agenda: Where are you still on the learning curve right now, and what would help? Normalize the learning curve.

Jesper

Yes, because the question isn't whether your people can handle more change. The question is whether you have named what it is costing them, and made it safe to say so.

Isabella

Good chatting, Jesper. Talk next time.