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Categories: Teams
We’ve had the delivery pressure of Q1 and now April is here! Where I am in the northern hemisphere that means we are starting to see warmer weather and everything feels lighter and nicer, and that includes work. Somehow, it’s not so hard to get through the back to back meetings when the sun is shining outside the office window.
April is a bit a breather after the struggle to get through Q1, but it also comes with the pressure of knowing that a big chunk of the year has already gone. So here’s what to do – don’t panic!
Many teams push on instead of pausing to recalibrate, that doesn’t have to be you. You can pause here, regroup after the first three months of the year and think about what intentional change you want to manage for your team.
Let’s start with the signs to look out for.
Warning signs
Look out for change fatigue showing up as disengagement or cynicism – people who roll their eyes when you talk about the plans for the year.
Another thing to put on your worry list is multiple initiatives competing for the same attention. There’s only so much change an organisation can deal with at any one time, and if you failed to land some biggies in Q1, that has just squeezed the change window into the remaining nine months.
Talk to the PMO or project leaders and get a sense of how they are feeling, are they OK to pause if they need to, or are we into the “Everything is priority one” syndrome?
How to reset
As a change manager, you have the power to help teams reset. It doesn’t mean stopping all the work or rebranding problems as “opportunities”. It’s about clarifying priorities for the rest of the year, the pace and the purpose. It’s about explaining what teams can manage to take onboard and resetting expectations with stakeholders.
Practical reset opportunities
I know I’ve used the word ‘opportunity’ there, but I don’t mean it negatively, I promise! Here are 5 things you could do if you know your teams are struggling and we’ve still got a lot of the year left to go.
Pause low-value change activity. Can it wait? Does it have to be done at all? There might be some things you can take off people’s plates that everyone will benefit from.
Reconfirm what success looks like now. Success might look different now to what it did when you first set these targets. Maybe you need a bit more benchmarking, or maybe other projects have shifted the art of the possible so you can set more challenging targets.
Simplify governance temporarily. I am not going to make any friends for saying that, but it will make a difference! Ditch what you can.
Talk to stakeholders. Remind them why you do what you do. Talk to them about expectations and how they sit within the wider programme of change across the organisation. Just because they have expectations doesn’t mean you can meet them, and it’s better to get that out in the open now rather than closer to the delivery date.
Give teams psychological permission to say “this isn’t working”. We had a long talk in my team about psychological safety at the start of the year, and it’s something we’re actively working on. Assess how your teams are feeling and what you can do to make it safer and easier for them to express concerns in a way that is listened to (and feels listened to).
As a change manager, you have the option to lead in a calm, considered way, it’s a leadership choice. We don’t need panic, and project managers are the same. We should be the stabilising influence on the team, even when everything is changing around us. We don’t just drive the change, we help people through it, and that’s a real skill.
Posted on: April 06, 2026 05:00 AM |
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