What you can commission · 04 of 04

Change Management & Adoption

What happens after the design lands. Most impact operating models fail here, not at the drawing board.

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What it is

Getting a new way of operating to actually take. Stakeholder work, sequencing, resistance, the first cycles of a new rhythm, and the follow-through that decides whether a design becomes how the organisation works or a document in a shared drive.

This is the least glamorous of the four and the one most often skipped. It is also where most impact operating models die — not at the drawing board, but in the six months after.

Duration
12 weeks to 9 months
Starts from
A design that exists and is not being used
Who it is for
Organisations that have commissioned an operating model — from us or anyone else — and cannot get it adopted
Delivered by
Whitney van Schyndel, working with your internal sponsor and change lead

When you need it

  • A design exists and has not been adopted.
  • New rhythms were introduced and quietly lapsed within two quarters.
  • The change moves authority, and the people losing it have not been engaged.
  • A previous transformation left scar tissue and a new one is being announced into it.
  • Adoption is currently somebody's twentieth priority alongside their actual job.

What is in scope

  • Stakeholder and authority mapping — who gains, who loses, who can quietly stop this. The third group is the one that decides the outcome.
  • Sequencing — what changes first, what waits, and which early cycle has to visibly work.
  • Running the first cycles alongside your team, so the new rhythm has been done rather than described.
  • Resistance work — surfacing objections early, including the legitimate ones. Some resistance is information.
  • Reinforcement — what has to change in objectives, agendas and reporting lines so the new way is the path of least resistance rather than an extra effort.
  • Adoption measurement — evidence that it is being used, not that it was launched.

How it runs

Usually twelve weeks to nine months, and typically attached to operating design rather than commissioned alone. Intensity is front-loaded around the first cycles, then tapers deliberately — an adoption programme that needs us at month eight has not worked.

What you receive

  1. A stakeholder and authority map, including who can quietly stop this
  2. A sequencing plan: what changes first, and which early cycle has to visibly work
  3. Facilitation of the first two to three cycles of the new rhythm, run with your team
  4. A reinforcement schedule — the changes to objectives, agendas and reporting lines
  5. An adoption measure showing use, not launch
  6. A tapering plan, so our involvement is designed to end

What we need from you

  • A sponsor who will enforce the new arrangements. When someone ignores the new rhythm, something has to happen.
  • An internal change lead with the time and standing to carry it after us.
  • Permission to speak to the people who are losing discretion, early rather than late.
  • Agreement that adoption is measured on use, and that the measure is published internally.

Where this has been done

Across CFYE and BUSY the same pattern held: the design was rarely the constraint. Adoption was. See the case studies.

The honest limit

Change management cannot substitute for authority. If the sponsor will not or cannot enforce the new arrangements, no amount of engagement will produce adoption — you will get enthusiasm in the workshops and the old behaviour in the diary. The question we ask at scoping is simple: when someone ignores the new rhythm, what happens? If the answer is nothing, that is the thing to fix first.

Questions we get asked

Why not just include this in the design work?

Often we do, and for most organisations that is the right shape. It is listed separately because it is sometimes commissioned on its own — where a design already exists, from us or from someone else, and has not been adopted. That is a different starting point and a different piece of work.

How long before it is self-sustaining?

Usually two to three full cycles of whatever rhythm you have introduced. For a quarterly review that is six to nine months. Intensity is front-loaded and tapers deliberately: if we are still needed at month eight, the adoption has not worked and we should both say so.

What if leadership says the right things but does not change behaviour?

This is the most common failure mode and it is rarely bad faith — it is usually that nothing was changed in objectives, agendas or reporting lines to make the new way easier than the old one. We treat that reinforcement layer as part of the work rather than as something the organisation will handle afterwards.

How to start

  1. Send us the designWhatever exists — ours or somebody else's — plus an honest account of where it has stalled.
  2. A 45-minute scoping callMostly about authority: what the sponsor can actually enforce, and what they cannot.
  3. A written scope and feeSequencing, the cycles we will run with you, the reinforcement changes, and the tapering plan.

The other three

All four run on the same underlying architecture — the Integrated Impact Operating Model, which we designed and published.