How Can Organizations Listen and Lead Through Disruptive Times?

Organizations are adopting new technologies, pursuing digital initiatives, and leveraging AI in innovative ways to keep pace with how they service customers. But adapting to constant disruption requires more than new tools or strategies.

In parallel, there is an increased focus on cost containment as slower growth drives the need to protect margins. This drive to become more efficient and relevant is challenged by the fact that while most organizations are planning for growth, in many instances, they are not staffing for it. These factors, along with many others, are contributing to an accelerated pace of change across companies.

Why Is Change Creating So Much Uncertainty?

Change is no longer associated with defined projects or measurable end dates. It is now a constant in our workplaces.

This is putting considerable strain on leadership. So much so that our research reveals only 59% of executives are confident in how their organization handles change. This figure alone is concerning, but the situation worsens at the manager level. Managers, who are typically responsible for implementing changes initiated by senior executives, show even less confidence (54%) in the organization’s ability to handle change.

Roughly 4 in 10 employees don't understand the reasons for changes taking place within their organizations and, perhaps more importantly, don't understand how those changes will impact them. Companies are shifting priorities and initiatives so quickly that it's becoming increasingly hard for employees to keep up.

At the same time, managers are more overloaded than ever. They struggle to execute the strategic initiatives of their leadership team while balancing the day-to-day tasks of keeping their teams afloat. With higher expectations and fewer certainties, leaders at every level have less time to communicate clearly about what's changing and why.

How Does Change Management Affect Employee Engagement?

We looked at the greatest predictors and barriers to engagement across our partner organizations to understand what elements of the employee experience differ most between highly engaged employees and those who are not.

Across the organizations that Perceptyx partners with, effective change management and the ability of organizations to support employees in adapting to change are now the biggest barriers — and, by extension, opportunities — to sustaining engagement. Employees who are highly engaged are far more likely to believe that their company does a good job of managing through change, compared to their counterparts. Confidence in senior management is very much an extension of the above two, as employees look to their leaders for direction and support in managing through change. Effective change leadership goes beyond managing timelines and processes. It requires leaders to focus on how people experience disruption and to remove the personal and professional barriers that stand in the way of adaptation.

In short, how we handle change has always mattered, but it has never mattered more than it does today.

Why Are Managers More Overloaded Than Ever?

While the pressure associated with navigating change is impacting everyone, it is not impacting everyone equally. As a result of this ongoing transformation, organizations are experiencing a “manager squeeze,” with managers today more overloaded than ever before. The scope of their role has expanded significantly: managers are now expected to deliver results, support employee well-being, sustain engagement, develop talent, and guide their teams through ongoing change, all at the same time. They are so overextended that they lack the bandwidth to lead in the way their teams have traditionally expected, particularly when it comes to supporting the skills development and change readiness needed to future-proof the organization.

In other words, managers aren’t doing the things needed to support organizational transformation. This also highlights the need to further support managers, 48% of whom say that their job has become more difficult and 53% of whom report that pressure from senior leadership has increased over the past year.

How Should Organizations Adapt Their Listening During Disruption?

Organizations that are effectively listening through disruption are asking the right questions to align around a clear set of organizational priorities. Asking questions that are relevant and timely helps to yield the right data. The right data does not mean more data. It means timely, targeted questions that allow leaders to identify patterns across listening events, link engagement drivers to business outcomes, and prioritize action with confidence.

This approach reflects a core principle of effective change leadership: leaders who succeed through disruption never assume they have all the answers. They ask questions throughout the change process and make continual adjustments based on what they hear. A well-designed listening strategy gives leaders the feedback loop they need to do exactly that.

What Do Leading Organizations Do Differently?

1. Give All Leaders Permission to Refocus and Reprioritize

Today, more than ever, we are hearing about executive leadership teams with dozens of “mission-critical” initiatives, all of which they are determined to execute flawlessly over the course of the year. While their ambition is commendable, it often creates disorder among senior-level leaders who struggle to prioritize this many initiatives, let alone assign increasingly limited resources to them.

The most effective organizations are narrowing their priorities deliberately. They identify two or three key business and talent priorities, make them widely known, and align resources—people, materials, and budget—accordingly. The most effective companies are defining their key business and talent priorities and making them widely known across all areas of the organization. They are using this as their “north star” to ensure that materials, equipment, and, most importantly, people are aligned to what will have the greatest impact on the collective success of their business.

This kind of clarity also frees leaders to focus on the human side of change. When priorities are clear and limited, leaders can spend less time managing the mechanics and more time helping their teams understand, adapt to, and commit to what's ahead.

2. Be Nimble by Adapting Listening Events to Address Challenges in Real-Time

As the needs of the business change, so should the approach to listening. Economic factors and corporate priorities can shift rapidly, making it important to ensure that organizations remain nimble and can adapt their listening events to the needs of their business — in real-time.

A global organization partnering with Perceptyx was struggling with employee retention, particularly among new hires. As a result, they introduced structured onboarding check-ins and found that the 60-day mark was the critical inflection point in a new employee’s tenure.

Due to that onboarding milestone, the organization learned that employees who felt the job they were doing accurately matched the description they were provided in the candidacy phase of their application were 5.5x more likely to stay through the end of their first year, when compared to those who did not. It turned out that a realistic job preview was the top predictor of new hire attrition.

This information allowed the organization to quickly pivot to make changes to the candidate experience and talent acquisition process that resulted in meaningful impact. In this example, the organization was able to identify a problem (new hire retention) and move quickly to gain the insights needed to solve that problem.

3. Move Quickly From Insights to Impact

Speed matters more than perfection. Organizations that wait for flawless survey designs or executive presentation decks before acting lose the opportunity to address issues while they are still actionable. Leaders must share results directly within the platform and move to targeted action within days, not months. Organizations are no longer waiting months or even weeks to cascade results. Nor are they waiting to have formal PowerPoint results presentations with their executive leadership teams. They are now working directly within the platform to share results in real-time, analyzing key drivers and comparing segment scores to identify specific issues and prioritize action.

The most effective organizations also take a high-involvement approach, inviting managers and teams into the process of interpreting results and deciding what to do next. When employees have a voice in shaping the response to change, commitment and buy-in follow.

4. Ensure Teams Are Well Supported

Transformation is a team sport. We need to unburden managers if we want to drive meaningful and sustainable change within our organizations. Managers simply cannot drive organizational transformation on their own. Organizations that are succeeding at supporting enterprise transformation at scale are unburdening managers by making transformation everyone’s responsibility. They are doing this, for example, by launching Perceptyx’s Intelligent Nudges directly to employees in the flow of their daily work so that everyone is able to actively participate in driving positive change.

These AI-powered, personalized nudges, backed by behavioral science, have proven highly effective in elevating leadership: Studies show 96% of nudge recipients reporting noticeable positive changes in leadership behaviors. By using capabilities like Activate, which includes AI-assisted Action Planning and Intelligent Nudges, organizations can empower managers, align actions with strategic goals, and drive lasting organizational change by engaging all employees in the transformation process.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between change management and leading through change?

Change management handles the mechanics — timelines, communication plans, and execution steps. Leading through change addresses the human side: how employees experience disruption, how leaders build trust during uncertainty, and how teams sustain momentum when resistance shows up. Industry research shows only 11% of executives are strong at addressing resistance, which is why process-focused approaches alone often fall short.

What are the 5 C's of change leadership?

Several frameworks use the "5 C's" label, but the most commonly cited behaviors are:

• Communicate — Explain why the change is happening, and repeat the message often.

• Collaborate — Involve employees in shaping the change, not just receiving it.

• Commit — Model the new behaviors visibly so others follow.

• Coach — Address individual concerns at each stage of the process.

• Course-correct — Adjust your approach based on what you learn along the way.

These behaviors target the exact points where most leaders break down. DDI data shows only 1% of executives are strong at reinforcing new ways of working.

What are the 4 pillars of change?

The 4 pillars of organizational change are:

• Leadership alignment — Senior leaders visibly support and model the change.

• Clear communication — Employees understand what is changing, why, and what it means for them.

• Employee involvement — People have a voice in how the change is designed and carried out.

• Sustained reinforcement — New behaviors are recognized and rewarded consistently over time.

Gartner research shows only 32% of business leaders report healthy change adoption. In most cases, a gap in one or more of these pillars is the reason.