Episode 1: Recovery Is Designed, Not Accidental
The gym has a way of correcting lazy thinking.
For years, I assumed recovery meant rest—doing less, stepping away, hoping soreness would fade on its own. The gym disabused me of that notion very quickly.
Recovery is not passive. It is an active, deliberate process.
When you train, muscle fibres are stressed and microscopically damaged. Recovery is the phase in which the body repairs the damage, adapts, and becomes stronger. This happens through sleep, nutrition, circulation, lighter movement—and, critically, time. Without recovery, effort does not compound. It deteriorates.
The gym is unapologetically honest about this. Ignore recovery, and progress stalls. Injuries appear. Motivation evaporates. The body simply stops cooperating.
Workplaces, unfortunately, are far more optimistic.
At work, recovery is often mistaken for disengagement—slowing down, switching off, or stepping away. In reality, workplace recovery is also active. It is the phase where people process change, rebuild confidence, and integrate new ways of working after sustained cognitive strain.
Workplace recovery looks like:
- Time to think after intense execution
- Safe spaces to ask repetitive or “obvious” questions
- Permission to make mistakes without penalty
- Opportunities to integrate learning into daily routines
Without this, effort fragments. People comply without understanding, adopt without confidence, and eventually revert.
This misunderstanding becomes especially costly during ERP implementations.
ERP programs place intense demands on organisations. They disrupt routines, vocabulary, decision rights, and identity. People are asked to unlearn years of muscle memory and replace it with unfamiliar workflows—often under pressure to perform immediately.
The recovery phase of an ERP implementation is the change management phase.
Not training calendars.
Not user manuals.
Not go-live announcements.
Change management is the period where users figure out how the system fits into their working lives—how it helps, where it slows them down, and what needs to be rethought. This is where frustration carries information, productivity dips are expected, and adoption becomes possible.
When this recovery phase is rushed or under-designed, organisations misread the symptoms. Fatigue is labelled as resistance. Confusion becomes incompetence. Shadow systems appear quietly, and spreadsheets return with remarkable loyalty.
In the gym, muscles grow during recovery.
In ERP programs, capability grows during change management.
The strongest implementations move in rhythm, not rush.
They treat go-live as a beginning, not a victory lap.
What isn’t designed for recovery returns as resistance.
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