What do you call it when your organisation isn’t just facing change, but several kinds at once, from different directions, at the same time?
Andrew Webster, VP of Organisational Innovation at ExperiencePoint, has a term for it: poly change. In this episode, host Nathy Gaffney sits down with Phuel co-founder Jo Pollard and Andrew to unpack why leading through change feels fundamentally different right now, and why that difference isn’t just about speed.
Andrew’s read on the landscape is refreshingly candid. He points to a growing number of leaders who feel so overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of change that they’ve quietly defaulted to a suck it up approach, effectively giving up on sensitive change leadership altogether. He also names the illusion of speed: the tendency to push change through without the time to communicate or involve people properly, which almost always means going backwards later to fix what got skipped.
Jo brings the on the ground view, describing a shift in how leaders are actually approaching change: less siloed thinking, more cross functional engagement and a growing recognition that leading change isn’t something to outsource to a change management team. She introduces the ready, willing and able framework, and makes the case that the able part (the skills piece) is usually the easy bit. It’s the willing part, genuine buy in, that determines whether change actually sticks.
The conversation turns to AI as the clearest live example of poly change in action. Andrew’s observation is sharp: leaders will run a thorough, thoughtful change process for almost anything else, then treat AI rollout as a pure technology switch that doesn’t need the same engagement or empathy. He references David De Cremer’s work on AI-savvy leadership to make the point that the fundamentals of good change leadership don’t change just because the change involves a new technology.
There’s a genuinely useful reframe on resilience here too. Rather than resilience as individual toughness, Andrew and Jo both point to culture and systems: rhythms, rewards and small structural tweaks that make new behaviours easier to sustain, as the more durable lever. Andrew’s daily huddle example, where teams share one customer insight for twenty seconds each morning, is a good illustration of how small a starting point can be.
Jo closes on something leaders don’t always want to hear: compassion and accountability aren’t opposites. Vulnerability from a leader builds trust, but it has to come paired with a path forward, not just shared struggle for its own sake.
This episode is worth your time if you’re leading a team through change right now and want language and frameworks for the complexity you’re already feeling, not another reminder that change is hard.
