Why Keeping Up With Change Seems Harder Than Ever

“Chaotic.” “Disruptive.” “Uncontrollable.” “Disheartening.”

The words we hear leaders use today to describe change are troubling. Although executives are accustomed to driving transformations in complex environments, we see even experienced leaders struggling. The traditional approach of inspiring employees with an aspirational vision of the future no longer works.

This happens because change itself continues to change in ways that cannot be fully controlled by leaders or their organizations. At Gartner, we see this as the convergence of four factors:

— Not only is there a greater volume of changes, but they accumulate, with one happening on top of the other.
— Not only are changes occurring faster, they are also ongoing, without a clearly defined beginning or end.
— Not only are the changes larger in scale, they also have multiple interdependencies, such as when one technological implementation fails to adequately integrate with another.
— Not only are changes unpredictable, they are also driven by external factors, with impacts coming from all sides: technology, politics, economic uncertainty, social trends and others.

Also read: President of PwC says most leaders have forgotten “the basics” regarding AI

We call this “unmanageable change” and, in this environment, leaders are having difficulty promoting the necessary transformations.

A March 2025 Gartner survey of more than 980 global leaders found that only 32% of mid- to senior-level leaders were able to implement their latest change initiative on time while maintaining employee engagement and performance.

Leaders are managing unmanageable change at a time when their employees are increasingly skeptical of these efforts: 79% of 2,900 global employees surveyed by Gartner in April 2025 do not trust their organization’s ability to change effectively.

Most believe that the organization has made poor decisions about change in the past and is unlikely to be successful in the future.

Amid this distrust, research from Gartner shows that the most successful leaders prepare employees to deal with unmanageable change by making change routine — treating it as an everyday business process.

Leaders who routinize change recognize that constant transformation is the norm. They take on ongoing responsibility for equipping employees with well-practiced change skills that become almost automatic and the right mindset to embrace ongoing change.

Successfully routinizing change means adopting the following three strategies:

1. Communicate that change is a journey, not a destination

Traditionally, leaders sought to inspire change by focusing on the desired outcome and the benefits it would bring. But employees who don’t trust the organization’s ability to change no longer believe that vision will become a reality.

Today’s successful change leaders recognize that transformation is a journey without a clear path — or even a fixed destination. Instead of promoting the benefits of change, they create a sense of urgency by highlighting the risks of not taking action. They reinforce the value of progress by making it clear that small, consistent wins along the journey are the metric of success.

Finally, they share information transparently but target communication to maximize employees’ ability to absorb the content.

2.Empower change-ready employees, not just stimulate enthusiasm for change

Typically, leaders encourage change by creating enthusiasm and offering support, such as tools and resources, for each initiative. However, treating change as a special event and generating excitement for an isolated occurrence is not in line with current reality.

Empowering employees to thrive in a landscape of unmanageable change means helping them develop the right mindset and practice change skills until they become second nature. This helps them be ready to embrace any change, at any time.

Dealing with change is an emotional journey. While in the past, leaders tried to help employees overcome discomfort by promising that the benefits would outweigh the costs, in the age of unmanageable change, employees need to become comfortable with discomfort. This requires leaders to help employees regulate their emotions.

A large pharmaceutical company wanted to help its employees understand the origins of their negative reactions to changes. She developed a tool for leaders, based on existing frameworks like David Rock’s Scarf model, to help them understand and respond to concerns about change.

For example, a leader could use this tool to discover that an employee’s resistance to a certain process automation is not actually linked to the effectiveness of the new process; in fact, the employee fears that their expertise will no longer be valued.

Once this is complete, the leader can offer reassurance by saying something like, “We will continue to rely on your expertise to help us improve the new process.”

This process can still be uncomfortable for that employee. But when he understands why he feels uncomfortable, he is more likely to be able to move forward with change despite that feeling.

Once employees are willing to move forward with change, they also need skills to adapt.

Leaders who routinize change build what we call “change reflexes.” These are core skills applicable to multiple transformation scenarios and practiced with enough repetition to become intuitive.

Gartner research has identified six core reflections of change:

— Be open to new experiences
— Manage time effectively
— Understand the context in which the business operates
— Using technology effectively
— Work well with anyone, regardless of prior experience
— Regulate emotions

The best time to practice and develop these reflexes for change is during everyday work.

For example, a financial services company helps leaders identify coaching opportunities — what they call “micro-moments of change.” These are tasks that resemble employees’ experiences during major transformations.

These micro-moments occur frequently enough to allow regular practice under less stressful conditions, creating the right environment to develop reflexes for change.

3. Anticipate multiple possible scenarios, not just the current change

Change leaders know to expect the unexpected, but those who routinize change take that vision a step further. They don’t just use their business acumen and visionary thinking to plan scenarios; empower employees to analyze and prepare for how likely future scenarios may impact the team.

To help leaders develop their teams’ forward-thinking and business acumen, a financial services organization offers a contextual visioning exercise to use with teams.

First, leaders identify possible external triggers, such as artificial intelligence or regulation, that could bring about change in the organization.

They then assign employees to research the trigger and teach the team what they learned.

As a group, the team discusses likely future scenarios and the skills needed to respond to them.

Over time, this helps employees more intuitively understand the changes that may be coming and the skills they need to develop to embrace a wide range of future transformations.

Normalizing continuous change and developing employees’ change reflexes means that when “change shifts”—as is inevitable in this era of unmanageable change—employees will have a more intuitive understanding of what to do next.

By investing in employees’ change reflexes, leaders can better prepare their organizations for a future of unmanageable change, seeing change not as something chaotic, disruptive, uncontrollable or discouraging, but as a core competency that can be mastered like any other.