What Organizations Call Fear
A company decides to reorganize. Roles are eliminated. Departments are consolidated. Some people will be moved. Some people will be fired. Some people will lose status and authority.
The organization then conducts a town hall. Leadership emphasizes the exciting new strategic direction. They talk about innovation and growth. They mention that change is always scary.
Then they ask people to embrace the change, overcome their fears, and contribute to the new vision.
The fear people are experiencing is not irrational resistance to novelty. The fear is the accurate perception that they are about to lose something valuable. For some people, that is literal employment. For others, it is status, authority, or stability. The fear is the rational response to an actual threat.
The organization names this emotion “fear of change” as if the problem is psychological. The problem is not psychological. The problem is that the organization is restructuring in a way that makes some people worse off. The fear is correct.
Why Fear Exists in Organizations
Fear in organizations is not primarily about uncertainty. People are reasonably comfortable with uncertainty if uncertainty does not threaten their core interests.
Fear is about asymmetric consequences. Someone else makes a decision. You live with the consequences.
An executive decides to adopt a new product strategy. The executive’s compensation is still based on revenue. If the strategy works, the executive is promoted. If the strategy fails, the executive moves to another company. An engineer decides whether to adopt this strategy. If the strategy fails, the engineer might lose their job. The engineer has more at stake. The engineer is more afraid. This is not a courage problem. It is a math problem.
A manager decides to downsize the team. If they downsize successfully and cut costs, they are promoted for operational excellence. If they downsize and lose critical capability, they blame the people they fired for not having been thorough enough. A team member works for this manager. If they are fired, they lose income and stability. If they stay, they might be fired later. The team member is more afraid. This is not a psychological problem. This is an asymmetric risk problem.
An organization decides to move fast and break things. This is fine for people whose job is to move fast. It is terrifying for people whose job is to maintain stability. The platform engineer is afraid of the breaking. The product manager is excited about the speed. Both emotions are correct responses to their positions in the structure.
Fear is also about visibility. Being noticed can be good or bad depending on what you are noticed for. A person who raises a concern is now visible as the person with the concern. If the concern is legitimate and addressed, visibility is good. If the concern is dismissed and later proves correct, the person was right but is now marked as a pessimist. If the concern proves wrong, the person is marked as risk-averse. Speaking up increases your visibility. Visibility increases your risk. The fear of speaking is rational.
The Structures That Create Fear
Organizations create fear through their incentive structures, not through mysterious psychological mechanisms.
The first structure is authority without accountability. A decision-maker can decide something that affects you, but they do not face consequences if it goes wrong. You face consequences. The decision-maker is not afraid. You are. This is not equal opportunity for anything. This is a structure designed to transfer risk downward.
The second structure is evaluation criteria that are designed to be impossible to fully satisfy. An employee is evaluated on delivery speed, code quality, learning new technologies, mentoring junior staff, and being a team player. These are not compatible. Speed and quality trade off. Learning takes time that could be spent delivering. Mentoring takes time that could be spent delivering. The employee can never fully succeed. The fear is that they will be evaluated poorly for failing to satisfy contradictory criteria. This fear is rational.
The third structure is elimination of fallback options. A person makes a career move that seems good at the time. They leave a stable team to join a startup. They accept a role that requires new skills. They consolidate their network around a specific company. Then the job market shifts. The company is no longer growing. The skills they learned are suddenly specific to an industry that is shrinking. They are trapped. The fear of being trapped is rational. They should have been afraid earlier. Fear would have led them to maintain optionality.
The fourth structure is inconsistent enforcement of standards. Rules apply sometimes and not other times depending on who you are and what the organization needs. A junior person is fired for missing a deadline that was due to unclear requirements. A senior person misses the same deadline and it is treated as a learning opportunity. A person knows their consequences are not determined by objective standards. Their consequences are determined by whether they are valuable and whether someone with power is annoyed with them. The fear is reasonable.
What Actually Happens When You Tell People to Overcome Fear
Organizations frequently tell people to overcome fear. Be brave. Embrace change. Lean into discomfort. Take risks.
For a person with actual resources and optionality, this is reasonable advice. A person with savings can afford to take a risky project. A person with a network can afford to speak an unpopular opinion because they have options if things go wrong. A person with status can afford to fail because failure does not eliminate their status entirely.
For a person without resources, this is a directive to accept risk they cannot afford. Tell a person with two dependents and limited savings to take a risky project and you are asking them to risk their family’s stability. Tell a person without a strong network to speak unpopular opinions and you are asking them to risk their position. Tell a person with fragile status to fail and you are asking them to fail publicly with no fallback.
The people who are most afraid are often the people who have the most to lose. Telling them to overcome fear is not coaching. It is asking them to be stupid. They are not being stupid by being afraid.
The Real Cost of Suppressing Fear
Organizations that successfully suppress fear through cultural pressure do not eliminate it. They suppress the signal.
An engineer who is afraid that their code will break production but is culturally forbidden from being afraid will not leave the code untouched. The engineer will deploy it anyway because admitting fear is culturally forbidden. The engineer will spend sleepless nights hoping it does not break. The engineer will be less focused on actually writing stable code and more focused on appearing confident.
A manager who is afraid of their boss’s reaction to bad news but is culturally forbidden from being afraid will misrepresent metrics. The manager will wait to deliver bad news until it is unavoidable. The manager will minimize the problem rather than escalate it when escalation could still help.
A person who is afraid of being fired if they do not comply with an unethical decision but is culturally forbidden from being afraid will comply and then feel trapped.
The organization that suppresses fear suppresses the signal that something is wrong. The organization then does not fix the thing that is wrong. The fear was correct. The organization proceeds anyway.
This is how organizations build themselves toward disaster while appearing confident. The fear was the warning system. The culture of suppressing fear disables the warning system.
What Quotes About Fear Actually Reveal
“Fear is the mind-killer.” This quote suggests fear is an enemy. In organizations, fear is often accurate information. The mind that kills fear might be the mind that ignores warnings.
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” This quote suggests the problem is emotional regulation. Often the problem is that doing it anyway is actually a bad decision. The person who is afraid of the risky product launch might be right. The person who is afraid of the promised promotion might see red flags that others do not. Doing it anyway might be the wrong choice.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in the face of it.” This quote is technically true. But it implies that action in the face of fear is universally admirable. Sometimes the courageous thing is to stay still. Sometimes the courageous thing is to say no. Sometimes the courageous thing is to leave.
These quotes valorize proceeding despite fear. They do not ask whether fear is warranted. They do not ask whether proceeding is correct. They assume that fear is always an obstacle to be overcome. Sometimes fear is information. Sometimes fear is correct.
When Fear Is the Right Response
Fear is the correct response when continuing is actually dangerous.
A person is in a job where their work is misrepresented. They did the work correctly. Someone else took credit or blamed them for problems they did not cause. This is how the organization operates. The person is afraid of being blamed. The fear is correct. The organization will blame them.
A person is in a role where success is impossible and failure is certain. The targets are unachievable. The resources are insufficient. The dependencies are unreliable. The person is afraid they will fail. The fear is correct. They probably will fail.
A person has watched their department reorganize three times in five years. Each reorganization eliminated some roles. The person does not know if they will be eliminated next time. The person is afraid of losing their job. The fear is correct. Jobs are being eliminated.
In each case, fear is the accurate assessment of organizational reality. Overcoming the fear does not change the reality. Overcoming the fear just makes the person proceed despite the warning their system is giving them.
What Actually Needs to Happen
If an organization wants less fear, it cannot do this through culture. Culture is weaker than structure.
Instead:
Make consequences proportional to the decision. If a junior person and a senior person both miss a deadline, they should face similar consequences. When consequences are proportional, the fear of arbitrary punishment decreases.
Give people optionality. A person who has savings is less afraid of losing a job. A person with a strong network is less afraid of retaliation. A person who has multiple career paths is less afraid of one path closing. An organization that helps people maintain optionality reduces their fear. This can be done through compensation, but it can also be done through sabbaticals, skill development, and network building.
Be honest about risks. Do not tell people reorganization will not affect them when it will. Do not promise stability you cannot provide. Do not tell people a role is secure when it is not. The person will be afraid anyway. At least they can plan.
Create actual accountability. The person who makes a bad decision should face consequences. The person who was harmed by that decision should not face the same consequences. When this is clear, fear becomes a tool for better decision-making rather than a tool for hiding failures.
Make it safe to be afraid. In organizations that are genuinely safe, people still feel fear because fear is a human response to risk. But they can talk about the fear without being shamed. They can plan based on the fear. They can be afraid and still proceed if proceeding is correct.
Do not ask people to overcome fear in a structure that is designed to harm them. Instead, fix the structure.
The Organizations That Move Fastest
Counterintuitively, organizations that move fastest are often the ones where people are allowed to be afraid.
A person can say “I am afraid this will break” and be taken seriously. The organization then slows down enough to ensure it will not break. The organization is slower in that moment but faster overall because it does not spend time fixing failures.
A person can say “I am afraid we are moving too fast” and the organization considers it. Sometimes the fear is correct and the slowdown prevents disaster. Sometimes the fear is not about the organization’s rate but about the person’s capacity and additional support is provided.
A person can say “I am afraid this decision is being made without adequate information” and the organization gathers information. The organization is slower to decide but the decision is better.
Organizations that suppress fear do not end up moving faster. They end up moving confidently in the wrong direction.
What Fear Means
When your organization has a lot of fear, do not assume the people are weak or cowardly or psychologically fragile.
Assume the organization has created conditions where fear is the rational response.
Assume the incentive structures are asymmetrical. Assume authority is not coupled with accountability. Assume consequences are not proportional. Assume people have been harmed by organizational decisions they could not prevent. Assume the organization’s track record suggests that harm is likely to continue.
The fear is telling you something true about your organization.
Do not fix the fear. Fix the organization.