Fixing the System, Not the People: Rethinking Burnout at AESA

At some point, in any career, work can start to feel heavy. You can hear it in the pauses between meetings, in the sighs that follow another long week, in how people start talking about their jobs. That kind of fatigue spreads quietly through an organization until it somehow just starts to feel normal.

People often call it burnout, but burnout doesn’t come from those who can’t handle the work. It comes from systems that make the work hard to sustain.

That’s where leadership and strategy have to come together. Repairing a tired system isn’t pep talks or another round of quick-fix initiatives. It’s about getting clear on how the work actually happens. As in,  who makes decisions, how information moves, and what takes up people’s time. When teams can see those patterns plainly, they can start shaping better ones.

That’s the approach the Central Regional Education Association in North Dakota took with Vital. Over the past two years, we’ve examined the everyday mechanics of their organization: how meetings run, how communication flows, and how people stay connected to their purpose. The focus wasn’t on adding anything new, but creating renewed space for people to think, act, and collaborate with confidence.

As a result, CREA didn’t need to reinvent its internal processes. They simply focused on making existing routines more transparent and easier to manage. It’s a change that has improved how staff work together and how CREA shows up for the 57 districts it serves.

The difference certainly isn’t dramatic, but it’s very, very real. 

We’ll share that work at AESA on Thursday, December 4, at 3:20 PM MT. It’s not a story about burnout. It’s a narrative about redesigning the way we work so that great people can keep doing their best work.