Mallol Arquitectos

Florie Lenoel

Organizational Transformation Leader

Adapting to the Accelerating Pace of Change

I spent 14 years in a pharmaceutical company, moving through HR and business roles across Latin America, most of them with one thing in common: leading change. Today I lead People and Culture at a family-owned design firm, where cultural transformation is the job, and I also work as a change consultant.

Over the years, I came to realize that fewer and fewer changes last more than 18 months before something new reshapes them. In my last six years there alone, I lived through more than 10 major transformations as an employee, roughly one every seven months.

Speed has redefined sustainability: a change must be adopted, and deliver value, before the next one arrives. That speed also brings more change fatigue for everyone. The question is no longer how to make change last, but how to make it worthwhile while it lasts.

Turning Leaders into Partners in Change

Everything starts at the top. Prosci’s 2023 study confirms that active and visible sponsorship is the top contributor to change success. But day to day, the leaders we trust are the ones beside us, our middle managers, and the same study found they remain the preferred senders of personal messages about change.

In my experience, the more a culture sees leading people as every leader’s job, the more accountable its leaders feel for making change understood and lived by their teams. Yet the cascade often stops before reaching them, so I bring supervisors in as co-designers: sounding boards, early input, and a voice in communications.

Alongside them, I build a network of change champions from our own people, who model the new behaviors and have a direct line to sponsors. For them, it is also growth, visibility and career fuel.

Balancing Change with Business Continuity

Leaders should not have to choose between the change and the business. It has to be both, like fixing a plane’s engine while it keeps flying. That is why I integrate change management into the project plan itself.

Then there is fatigue. Gartner found that employees’ willingness to support enterprise change fell from 74 percent in 2016 to 43 percent in 2022. Fatigue affects leaders, too. I keep the most mentally demanding moments, like training and early adoption, away from our busiest season, and I bring in trained back-up so our experts can focus on the change while others cover day-to-day work.

“When people are close to clients, they stop being receivers of change and become its creators. That is when organizations flourish.”

Leaders also need support. DDI found that only 18 percent feel very prepared to lead change. That is why I favor short, practical training that keeps pace with it.

Finally, communication has to keep pace as change speeds up. I share early wins quickly, and I say so honestly when we don’t know yet.

Measuring the Human Cost of Transformation

After many transformations, I have learned there is hardly a ‘right’ methodology. As a consultant, I now see the value of an outside view. We arrive without having seen the whole movie, so we ask fresh questions and partner candidly with sponsors, supervisors and champions.

Agile brings client-centricity, short iterations and experimentation. But beware of overlap. When changes arrive faster than they are adopted, none of them stick. Define what success means for each change, even if only good enough.

Coaching has been very useful with resistance, because it helps people work through their own reactions. It also changed how I judge a change: not only success or failure, but its cost. A change can hit every target and still leave teams that no longer trust their leaders. That cost rarely shows on a scorecard.

Preparing People for Continuous Change

Despite AI and new tools, what matters most in leading change is still the same; courageous communication, telling the good and the ugly in a way that fits every culture. A cultural assessment can also be a great tool before driving a major change: it shows what drives people, what holds them back, and who you can count on.

Since change now comes so fast, an adaptable culture needs an anchor: a strong sense of purpose and clarity on what will still be true over the next 18 months. When people are close to clients, they stop being receivers of change and become its creators. That is when organizations flourish.