The Hidden Cost of Change (Part 2)

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We call it resistance. what if it's capacity?

Introduction
One of the most common phrases I hear about organisational change is: "People are resistant to change."

Sometimes it is said with frustration. Sometimes with disappointment. Occasionally with resignation. The implication is usually the same. The organisation has a good strategy. The technology is sound. The business case makes sense. If only people were more willing to embrace the change, progress would be faster.

After writing the first article in this series, I began to wonder whether that diagnosis is always correct. What if some of the behaviours we label as resistance are not opposition to the change, but signs that the organisation is running low on capacity?

The distinction matters because the leadership response is very different. If the problem is resistance, the solution is often communication, engagement or persuasion. If the problem is depleted organisational capacity, the solution may be something else entirely.

The science

Several strands of research point towards a similar conclusion, although they describe it in different ways.

The Job Demands-Resources Model suggests that every job contains demands that require sustained effort and resources that help people meet those demands. When demands continue to increase without a corresponding increase in resources, people become more vulnerable to exhaustion, disengagement and reduced performance. Importantly, the issue is not simply the amount of work. It is the balance between what work requires and the resources available to meet those requirements.

This feels particularly relevant during AI-enabled transformation. Employees are often expected to continue delivering today's work whilst simultaneously learning new technologies, redesigning processes and adapting to unfamiliar ways of working. In many organisations, the new demands arrive before the old ones disappear.

Conservation of Resources Theory adds another perspective. Hobfoll proposed that people strive to acquire, retain and protect valued resources such as time, energy, confidence, competence and supportive relationships. When these resources are threatened or depleted, people naturally become more protective of what remains. From this perspective, behaviours that appear to be resistance may sometimes be attempts to conserve limited resources rather than deliberate opposition to change. Repetitive reorganisations can intensify uncertainty and workload, which in turn contributes to change fatigue and makes further change harder to absorb.

Psychological Contract Theory provides a further insight. Employees carry unwritten expectations about their relationship with their organisation. During periods of repeated change, people may begin asking different questions. Will this change last? Is it worth investing my energy in learning another system? Will today's priorities still matter next year? When uncertainty becomes prolonged, people may become more cautious about where they invest their effort and commitment.

None of these theories suggests that resistance is a myth. People do sometimes disagree with change, but what they collectively suggest, however, is that apparent resistance may have more than one explanation.

Key findings

Looking across these different theories, several patterns begin to emerge. Organisational capacity rarely disappears overnight. It is more likely to decline gradually as demands accumulate faster than organisations can replenish the human resources required to sustain them.

The earliest signs may not be burnout. They may show up first as changes in behaviour.

• Curiosity gives way to caution.
• Experimentation becomes compliance.
• People contribute fewer ideas, ask fewer questions and become more reluctant to invest in initiatives they are unsure will endure.
• Decision-making slows because people are already managing multiple competing priorities.
• Managers spend increasing amounts of time providing reassurance whilst having less time available to coach, develop and support their teams.

None of these behaviours proves that organisational capacity has been depleted. But taken together, they may represent signals that deserve closer attention than they often receive.

What this means in practice

Perhaps organisations are sometimes solving the wrong problem.

When leaders observe slower adoption, increased scepticism or reduced enthusiasm, it is understandable to ask:
"How do we overcome resistance?"

But there may be another question worth asking first.
"What has this organisation already adapted to?"
"What resources have people already spent?"
"What have we asked them to learn, unlearn and make sense of over the past twelve months?"

These questions shift the conversation away from individual attitudes and towards organisational conditions.

If organisational capacity is finite, then every major transformation draws from the same pool of attention, learning effort, managerial judgement, emotional energy and collaborative capability.

Eventually, organisations may need to ask a harder question. They can continue interpreting these behaviours as evidence that people need to become more resilient or they can begin asking whether the organisation itself has become less able to absorb another wave of change. Those are very different leadership conversations. The first focuses on changing people and the second focuses on stewarding organisational capacity. As AI continues to reshape the world of work, I suspect that distinction will become increasingly important.

A quote to reflect on
"What if the behaviours we describe as resistance are not problems to be fixed, but signals that organisational capacity is being quietly depleted?"

A question to reflect on
The next time you hear someone describe employees as resistant to change, what evidence would help you distinguish between genuine opposition to the change and an organisation that may simply be running low on capacity?
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Further reading

• Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328.
• Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524.
• Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• De Vries, M. S. E., & De Vries, M. S. (2023). Repetitive reorganizations, uncertainty and change fatigue. Public Money & Management, 43(2), 126–135.

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