Change Fitness in Organisations:

What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Build It

We’ve had the privilege of seeing how many organisations respond to change, some with energy and adaptability, some with fear and resistance. To illustrate the difference, let’s look at two examples. The first organisation is a fictionalised amalgamation of patterns we’ve seen across several organisations, and the second is a true story of an organisation we’ve worked in and reflects what happens when change fitness is deliberately built.

In the first organisation, conversations about change management were dominated by fear. Approvals took months, leaders spoke about psychological safety but were still hard on mistakes, and employees described change as something that was “done to them.” Progress stalled, morale dropped, and burnout spread.

In the second organisation, the story was very different. Leaders deliberately involved people at all levels in shaping strategy. They encouraged experimentation, created spaces for dialogue, and paid attention to pacing. Change wasn’t a one-off initiative; it became a living conversation woven into daily planning. Looking ahead to the coming year, they already had an eye on what was coming further down the line, and this enabled them to stay nimble.

The difference between these two? Change Fitness.

Just as physical fitness (our strength, flexibility and stamina) determines how well we handle strain, recover, and improve our skills, Change Fitness in organisations describes the collective capacity to anticipate, absorb, adapt, and succeed through change. When organisations are change-fit, they can pivot without losing energy or trust. When they’re not, even small disruptions feel overwhelming.

Why Change Fitness Matters

Change is no longer an occasional disruption. It is the defining feature of our time. Kotter observed nearly three decades ago that most corporate change efforts fall somewhere between success and failure, “with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale”. Today, the pace has only quickened. Technological breakthroughs arrive faster than ever before, and 88% of executives expect the rate to increase further. Meanwhile, well-being and engagement are declining globally. Put simply, change management is harder, faster, and more draining than ever. That’s why organisations urgently need to build Change Fitness.

Organisations that invest in building fitness for change don’t just survive disruption; they use it as a strategic advantage. We’ve seen it happen.

The Five Dimensions of Change Fitness

Our experience, combined with research in the field, has helped to define five interrelated dimensions upon which Organisational Change Fitness rests. We could think of them as five muscle groups, each of which contributes to overall strength, flexibility, and stamina. The performance of each impacts the potential of the others. When one is underdeveloped, it limits the whole system.

1. Mindset & Culture (Strength)

Culture shapes how people interpret and respond to disruption. Schein describes culture as the shared basic assumptions that drive behaviour, and sustained change requires surfacing and reshaping those assumptions.

A growth mindset can significantly strengthen organisational Change Fitness by shifting assumptions about the ability to corporate change itself.

Fixed mindset assumptions:

• Failure in change efforts signals incompetence.”
• “People either ‘get it’ or they don’t.

Growth mindset assumptions:

• Setbacks during change provide useful data; they don’t mean the change is doomed.
• Everyone has the capacity to grow if given support, feedback, and time.

In addition, psychological safety, the shared belief that it’s safe to speak up, is critical. It enables candour, experimentation, and risk-taking, which are essential for learning during change management.

We’ve seen what happens when organisations send mixed signals. Leaders use the language of psychological safety, but mistakes are not tolerated. The rhetoric says “experiment,” but the team’s lived experience says “cover your back.” When this happens, responsiveness and innovation stall. By contrast, where values of openness and learning are genuinely lived, we’ve seen people feeling safe to try new things, and adaptability flourishes.

2. Leadership & Direction in Change Fitness (Discipline)

Leadership is one of the strongest levers of organisational Change Fitness. Kotter noted that successful transformation requires urgency, a guiding coalition, and a clear vision, powerfully communicated and modelled in leaders’ own behaviour. In practice, that means leaders must set a compelling direction, align stakeholders, and embody adaptability themselves. Transformational leadership, vision, inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration (according to Bass & Riggio) are strongly associated with readiness for change and sustained performance. For Change Fitness, this means that when leaders consistently practise these behaviours, they don’t just guide their teams through a single change effort; they build the long-term confidence, adaptability, and trust that make organisations fit for change again and again.

We’ve seen firsthand how leadership behaviour can make or break a team’s ability to adapt. Two teams in the same organisation both faced difficult circumstances. Coincidentally, both teams got new leaders within weeks of each other.

The first leader leaned in with listening. She built trust quickly, aligning the team with their strategic vision and showing people she had their backs. Energy surged, people were willing to take risks, and the team began developing new products with confidence. The second leader, less aware of how she was being perceived, unintentionally eroded trust. Her team grew cautious, reluctant to innovate, and progress stalled.

When leaders provide clarity, create safety, and model adaptability, they give people the confidence to step into uncertainty. Without that, even the most skilled teams hesitate, and change falters.

3. Capabilities & Skills for Change (Technique)

Dynamic capabilities, the ability to sense emerging shifts, seize opportunities, and reconfigure resources in response, are the bedrock of organisational agility (Teece et al). They allow organisations not just to survive change, but to use it as a platform for growth.

At a practical level, this rests on skills in systems thinking, team learning, and effective dialogue (Senge). Systems thinking helps people see the bigger picture, how strategy, operations, and behaviour connect, and where leverage points for change lie. Team learning ensures knowledge is shared and built collectively, rather than locked in silos. Effective dialogue means leaders and teams can surface difficult truths, listen deeply, and ask questions that elicit new thinking. These are the everyday skills that make adaptation routine.

Too often, however, we see these skills underdeveloped. Leaders get caught in operational delivery, leaving little time to sense emerging shifts or align strategy with daily work. Many rely too heavily on their own “good ideas,” rather than engaging their teams in the problem-solving process. Others avoid the hard conversations about corporate change because they feel ill-equipped to manage the emotional fallout. The result is that opportunities for alignment and innovation are lost.

These examples show why skills matter. Without systems thinking, leaders struggle to connect intent to execution. Without dialogue, discomfort goes unaddressed and learning stalls. Without team learning, leaders carry the burden alone.

And let’s acknowledge this plainly: it’s wild out there. Leading skilfully in complex environments is hard. The good news is that these are not fixed traits; they are skills that can be learned, practised, and strengthened over time. When change management organisations invest in them, they create the capacity not only to manage change, but to harness it for growth.

4. Structures & Processes for Organisational Agility (Flexibility)

Structures and processes can either accelerate or obstruct an organisation’s ability to adapt, and to keep adapting as conditions shift. Agile and Lean practices emphasise rapid feedback, iteration, and flow (Agile Manifesto, Womack & Jones). Socio-technical systems theory reminds us that systems must evolve with people, not apart from them (Trist). For Change Fitness, this means organisations need processes that are looped, responsive, transparent, and enabling; otherwise, energy leaks into bureaucracy rather than fuelling progress.

We saw this vividly in a post-merger organisation where approvals were so bureaucratic that managers joked you needed three signatures to change a light bulb. Change decelerated, and people lost motivation because every small improvement felt like pushing through concrete. Momentum only returned when leaders tackled the structures themselves, streamlining approvals, aligning processes with strategy, and beginning to reward staff not just for completing tasks, but for improving systems.

The effect was transformative. Instead of being barriers, processes became enablers. Employees no longer felt paralysed; they felt trusted to act. In terms of Change Fitness, this was like freeing up stiff joints; suddenly, the organisation could move fluidly, experiment faster, and respond more quickly to emerging shifts.

5. Resilience & Energy in Organisational Change (Stamina)

Resilience is the ability to maintain performance under strain and bounce forward from shocks (Sutcliffe & Vogus, ISO 22316). But resilience is not just an individual trait; it’s an organisational capacity, shaped by how leaders sequence change, support wellbeing, and manage energy. Global data makes the stakes clear: Gallup’s 2024 report shows employee engagement and wellbeing are in decline, while WHO (2022) warns that poorly managed workloads and change processes are now major risks to mental health.

We’ve seen what happens when resilience and energy are not managed. We’ve heard employees describe change initiatives landing so quickly and without coordination that it felt like being in a boxing ring, taking punches from every side, without knowing where the next hit would come from. This is what “change fatigue” looks like. 

The contrast is clear when leaders communicate the why of change management models, pace initiatives thoughtfully, and invite people into co-creation. Instead of feeling battered, employees feel part of a shared journey. Energy rises, trust builds, and the organisation develops stamina to face the next wave.

For Change Fitness, resilience and energy are like cardiovascular fitness in the body; without them, you tire quickly, with them, you can sustain effort, recover faster, and go the distance.

Together, these five dimensions make up an organisation’s Change Fitness profile. Some will be stronger than others. But just like in physical fitness, balance is everything: building strength in one area while neglecting another rarely delivers sustainable results.

Assessing Change Fitness

Understanding where you stand is the first step to building strength. That’s the purpose of our Change Fitness Assessment. It combines a quantitative survey with qualitative conversations and a review of existing organisational data to create a rounded picture of how fit an organisation really is for change.

The survey measures each of the five dimensions on a simple Likert scale, generating a baseline Change Fitness Index. This highlights both strengths and vulnerabilities, while enabling benchmarking across teams or over time. Alongside the numbers, focus groups and interviews provide depth, surfacing the stories behind the scores, and helping leaders understand why people experience corporate change the way they do. A review of existing organisational data adds another layer of insight, showing how lived experiences align with (or diverge from) hard indicators such as engagement scores, turnover rates, or productivity trends.

The outputs are easy to work with. A radar chart (or spider graph) maps the five dimensions, making it immediately clear where fitness is strong and where it is under strain. Dips in the profile reveal blockers to adaptability, peaks show existing levers that can be harnessed. Repeating the assessment over time allows organisations to track their progress, making fitness visible and measurable.

The value of this approach is precision. Resources for change are always limited. By pinpointing the areas that matter most, the Change Fitness Assessment helps the C-suite focus their investments of effort, energy, hands, time, and money, where they will deliver the greatest impact. It can be used proactively, to build resilience before disruption strikes, or as a support tool during a live change initiative, helping teams strengthen their fitness while navigating the journey.

In either case, the assessment provides clarity. Leaders know where to prioritise, employees feel heard, and the organisation gains a roadmap for building sustainable change capacity.

How to Build Change Fitness

Building Change Fitness is much like building physical fitness: it takes deliberate practice, attention to balance, and a focus on the basics. Even without a formal Change Fitness Assessment, organisations can begin strengthening their capacity to adapt.

• Strengthen the muscles. Invest in leadership development, coaching, and team learning so that core skills, listening, systems thinking, and adaptive decision-making become part of everyday practice.
• Improve flexibility. Cut unnecessary bureaucracy, simplify decision rights, and embed feedback loops so the organisation can bend without breaking. Agile and Lean practices offer simple disciplines that keep systems responsive.
• Build stamina. Protect well-being, pace change initiatives, and treat energy as a finite resource to be managed wisely. Sustainable performance depends on recovery as much as on effort.
• Shift mindsets. Reframe change as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat to stability. Celebrate experimentation, normalise learning from mistakes, and make curiosity a cultural value.

We’ve seen the difference these steps can make. A weekly practice of asking, “What did we learn this week that could change how we work?” can unlock fresh thinking and energise a tired team. Or aligning performance reviews to include system improvement, not just task completion, can create a culture where innovation is rewarded, not sidelined.

Small, consistent investments compound over time. The more organisations practise these habits, the fitter they become. And just as with physical training, the real pay-off is not only in tackling today’s challenge, but in being ready for whatever comes next.

Using Strength to Your Strategic Advantage

Change management is not slowing down. Technological disruption, shifting markets, and evolving expectations will continue to test organisations again and again. 

That is what Change Fitness offers: a way to build the organisational strength, flexibility, and stamina to turn disruption into a strategic advantage. Fit organisations don’t crumble under pressure. They sense shifts early, respond with clarity, and carry their people with them. They emerge from change not depleted, but stronger.

By understanding the five dimensions of Change Fitness, assessing your current profile, and deliberately building capability, executive leaders can ensure that scarce resources go where they will make the greatest difference. 

In the end, the organisations that succeed will not be those that avoid change, but those that are strong enough to use it to their advantage. The only real question is: How fit is your organisation for change?