How to Recognize and Deal with Change Saturation

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Change Management  

Mr. Creosote.

Some of you may know the name. He was a character in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Portrayed by Terry Jones, Mr. Creosote ate and drank massive quantities in a French restaurant. At the end of the meal, the server (played by John Cleese) offered Mr. Creosote a wafer-thin mint. After some objection, Mr. Creosote agreed to eat the mint, which caused an unfortunate reaction.

Those of you who know the skit (or just searched for it) know my description cleaned things up quite a bit. While most could have easily eaten the small mint without any adverse consequence, for Mr. Creosote it was just too much to handle. He had hit a saturation point.

This analogy applies directly to how much newness an organization can absorb before things start breaking. It’s the organization’s saturation point.

In my article 8 Ways to Reduce Mental Load as a Project Manager, I discuss the idea of mental load being cumulative in nature in how it contributes to stress. A person can have a high degree of stress in their professional life, and if even minor stress in their personal life is added, it could put them over the edge. Mental load can’t be compartmentalized.

As I think about how mental load relates to organizational change, the same concept easily applies to how much change an organization can take on. A project with a relatively small …

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