DFA’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies to humanize the workplace, empower people, and foster innovation. Members can access full versions the Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.

The organizations that will move forward most effectively will be those building the internal capacity to lead change well.

As we look ahead, we can assume the one thing that will not change is change itself. We are living and working in a super-cycle of change. Organizations are navigating rapid technology acceleration, evolving workforce expectations, shifting business priorities, and ongoing disruption, often all at once.

In this kind of environment, the ability to lead through uncertainty and help people thrive becomes an essential skill.

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This Action Step invites leaders to assess and strengthen their organization’s “change readiness” muscles by evaluating how effectively their teams, managers, systems, and culture support change in practice.

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Set aside time to conduct a simple organizational Change Readiness Audit.

Step 1: Identify a Current or Upcoming Change Initiative

Select one organizational shift currently underway or expected in the near future. This could include:

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Members: Read the full version of this Action Step in the Member Resource Center.

To read this entire Action Step become a DFA member.

DFA’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies to humanize the workplace, empower people, and foster innovation. Members can access full versions the Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.

Burnout remains widespread. Engagement has weakened. Manager engagement is dropping. Across recent workplace data, the signal is consistent and sobering: people are being asked to sustain performance in systems that often do not sustain them.

The question across our membership is no longer whether wellbeing depends on organizational conditions. It does. The question now is how to build those conditions inside organizations that were not designed for them, amid pressures that do not pause.

Organizations cannot demand sustainable excellence from people while ignoring the human conditions required to produce it.

Sustained ambition requires sustained energy, which in turn requires structures, norms, and leadership behaviors that many organizations are still learning how to build. Leading these efforts requires us to reframe the conversation around wellbeing:

• Wellbeing is not only what we provide to individuals, but also the conditions we create around them. Holding both is a shift in how we think about the work.
• Real wellbeing work shapes staffing, deadlines, performance signals, leader modeling, meeting norms, and recovery rhythms. Those are structural questions, and structural change requires sponsorship, sequencing, and reinforcement.
• The shifts we are talking about land more deeply when leaders embody them. That is true of every meaningful change effort, and it is especially true of this one.

How do we create the conditions for people to thrive amid overload, fragile trust, constant change, and outdated leadership norms so the organization can continue to deliver sustained excellence?

The five reframes that follow are how we answer this question. They are also the framing shifts that have to land before any organizational wellbeing strategy can move from individual programs to systemic change. As you use them, look for the structural habits, leadership behaviors, team norms, and policies that are shaping people’s capacity to thrive….

Members: Read the full version of this Action Step in the Member Resource Center.

To read this entire Action Step become a DFA member.