One of our clients, let’s call her Judy, had only recently stepped into a leadership role when she inherited a software platform upgrade that wasn’t going well.
Resistance to the new system was palpable.
Most mornings as she rode the elevator up to her floor, she would overhear the same kinds of conversations. People comparing workarounds. Jokes about deliberately ignoring the system. Others admitting they were using it but almost apologising for it, met with the peer-pressured chorus of “we don’t like it.”
The organisation felt chaotic. People were frustrated, the platform wasn’t working as smoothly as hoped, and confidence in the change was slipping.
Situations like this often feel like a house-on-fire moment. Everything looks urgent. Every conversation surfaces another problem.
But moments like these aren’t just chaotic.
They’re complex.
Judy wasn’t just trying to find her own footing as a new leader. She was also expected to calm the noise, appease frustrated colleagues, and somehow guide the organisation toward adoption.
Her question to us was simple and completely reasonable.
Where do I even start?
It’s natural when everything feels like a problem to see prioritisation as impossible. Every team has an issue. Every conversation surfaces a new frustration. Every fix seems urgent. Every ‘to do’ list gets rewritten five times a day.
In situations like this, trying to solve everything is the fastest way to solving nothing.
Put on your own oxygen mask first
When every day becomes reactive, leaders quickly slip into firefighting mode. Every complaint feels urgent and every issue demands attention. This can be doubly true when you’re new and trying to prove yourself.
The problem is that constant urgency erodes the very capability leaders need most: the ability to think clearly.
Change leaders need space to step back and see patterns across the noise. Even a short period of protected thinking time can shift someone from reacting to every issue to making deliberate choices about where effort will have the greatest impact.
In complex environments, leadership is less about solving every problem and more about deciding where intervention will actually shift the system.
Without that pause, it’s almost impossible to prioritise well.
Start with the points of greatest pain
Once you step back, the next question becomes: where is the biggest pain in the system?
Not every problem deserves equal attention.
Some issues are irritating but manageable. Others stop work from happening altogether, create significant frustration, or undermine confidence in the change.
Those high-pain areas deserve attention first.
When people feel stuck or exposed by a system, frustration quickly turns into resistance. Stabilising the most painful points helps restore trust that the situation is improving.
Look for friction, not just failure
Many transformation problems are not catastrophic failures. They are points of friction.
Processes that take too many steps and don’t feel intuitive. Screens where people can’t easily find what they need. Workflows that don’t match how the work actually happens. FAQs that don’t answer the question you have.
When the effort required to complete a task suddenly increases, people push back. Not because they dislike change, but because the system has made their work harder.
And when work becomes harder, it can affect something deeper. For many people, doing good work is closely tied to their sense of competence and identity. When systems undermine that, frustration can quickly escalate.
With this in mind, pay attention to where people repeatedly get stuck, ask the same questions, or create workarounds. These are signals that the system is creating unnecessary cognitive load.
Reducing friction often unlocks more progress than trying to redesign everything at once.
Small improvements that are visible and meaningful can also change the narrative.
Find the root cause(s)
A systems thinking lens helps here too.
Not all problems are equal. Some issues act like keystones. When they are solved, several other frustrations disappear with them.
A single reporting issue might be forcing dozens of teams to create manual workarounds. Fixing that one problem may remove hours of frustration across the organisation.
A useful question is:
If we solved this one issue, what else would improve?
Where a single fix relieves pressure across the system, that’s where effort has the greatest leverage.
In complex change environments, progress rarely comes from trying to fix everything at once.
It comes from identifying the few interventions that stabilise the system enough for people to move again.
The trap many change leaders fall into
Many change leaders feel pressure to address every issue comprehensively.
Yet messy transformations rarely improve through perfection.
What people need most is evidence that the system is stabilising and that their frustrations are being heard and reduced.
Progress builds confidence.
Confidence creates momentum.
Momentum is what ultimately makes change stick.
