You've seen it happen. A company spends six months and half a million dollars rolling out a new software suite, only for the employees to keep using their messy Excel spreadsheets under the table. It’s frustrating. It’s expensive. Honestly, it’s mostly preventable. Most leadership teams treat change like a technical problem to be solved with a better manual, but change isn't about the software—it’s about the person sitting in the cubicle wondering if they’re about to be replaced by an algorithm. That is exactly why ADKAR a model for change has stayed relevant for over two decades. It stops looking at the "project" and starts looking at the human.
Jeff Hiatt, the founder of Prosci, didn't just pull this acronym out of thin air. He looked at hundreds of organizations to see why some thrived during transitions while others turned into a chaotic mess of Resignation letters and plummeting morale. What he found was that change happens at the individual level. If you can’t get one person to change, you can’t get a thousand to do it.
The Reality of Awareness (And Why "Emailing Everyone" Isn't It)
The first letter, A, stands for Awareness. This sounds simple. It isn't. Most managers think they’ve checked this box because they sent a company-wide memo at 4:30 PM on a Friday. Awareness in the ADKAR context means the employee actually understands why the change is happening right now. They need to see the risk of staying the same.
Think about Kodak. They had the tech for digital photography. They were aware that digital existed, but the internal "awareness" of the necessity to pivot was missing. They didn't feel the floor burning. If your team thinks the current way of doing things is "fine," your change initiative is dead on arrival. You have to explain the business drivers—maybe it’s a new competitor, a shift in customer behavior, or a glaring inefficiency that’s eating the margin. Without that "why," people just see the change as extra work.
Desire is the Hard Part
This is where things usually get messy. Desire is the second stage. You can't force someone to want something. You can’t "policy" your way into someone’s heart. Desire is purely personal. It answers the "What’s in it for me?" (WIIFM) question that every single employee is asking silently during your PowerPoint presentation.
Some people are motivated by career growth. Others just want their job to be less of a headache. If you’re implementing a new CRM, the sales team doesn't care that it helps the accounting department with reporting. They care if it helps them close deals faster. If it doesn't, they won't have the desire to use it. They’ll resist. They’ll complain. They might even quit. Managers often confuse Awareness with Desire, assuming that if people understand the "why," they’ll automatically be on board. That’s a massive mistake. You have to influence their personal choice to support the change.
Knowledge Isn't Just Reading the Manual
Once someone wants to change, they need to know how. Knowledge is the third pillar of ADKAR a model for change. But here’s the kicker: knowledge is useless if you don't have the first two stages handled. Have you ever been forced to attend training for a tool you hated and didn't think you needed? You probably retained about 5% of what was said.
Knowledge involves two things: how to change during the transition and how to perform once the change is live. This is where you see the "training gap." Companies often dump a massive amount of information on employees three weeks before a launch. Then, when the launch happens, everyone is paralyzed because they’ve forgotten everything. True knowledge building is incremental. It’s hands-on. It’s messy.
Ability: The Gap Between "Knowing" and "Doing"
There is a huge difference between knowing how to swing a golf club and actually hitting a 300-yard drive. That gap is Ability. In the workplace, this is where the wheels fall off. An employee might understand the new software (Knowledge) and want to use it (Desire), but they might lack the actual skill or the time to implement it because their daily workload hasn't been adjusted.
- You need coaching.
- You need time to practice.
- You need a safety net where people can fail without getting fired.
If you don't provide the resources for someone to actually execute the change, you’ll end up with a workforce that is stressed, burnt out, and resentful. They want to do it, they just literally can't.
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Reinforcement: Making it Stick
Finally, we have Reinforcement. Human beings are wired for habit. We gravitate toward the path of least resistance. If you don't reinforce the new behavior, people will revert to their old ways the second things get stressful. This is the "forgotten" stage.
Usually, the project team celebrates the launch, drinks some champagne, and moves on to the next thing. Meanwhile, the actual users are struggling. Reinforcement means celebrating small wins. It means correcting behavior when people slip back. It means making the new way the only way by removing the old systems entirely.
Common Misconceptions About the Model
A lot of people think ADKAR is a linear checklist. It’s not. It’s more like a series of gates. If you haven't passed through the "Desire" gate, it doesn't matter how much "Knowledge" you throw at someone. They won't absorb it. You might have to loop back. You might have a group that has high Awareness and Desire but zero Ability because your training was poor.
Another mistake? Thinking the leadership team doesn't need ADKAR. Newsflash: they do. If the C-suite doesn't have the "Desire" to change their own habits, the rest of the company will smell the hypocrisy from a mile away. Change is top-down and bottom-up at the same time.
Why Prosci’s Research Still Holds Up
Prosci has been benchmarking this stuff for years. Their data consistently shows that projects with "excellent" change management are six times more likely to meet or exceed their objectives. Six times. That’s the difference between a successful merger and a corporate disaster that ends up as a Harvard Business Review case study on what not to do.
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But let's be real—managing people is hard. It’s non-linear. It’s emotional. The ADKAR a model for change provides a psychological roadmap for that chaos. It reminds us that behind every "digital transformation" or "reorg" are people who are worried about their mortgages and their status in the office.
Practical Steps to Implement ADKAR Tomorrow
If you're in the middle of a rocky transition, stop focusing on the deadlines for a second. Talk to your people.
- Run a Pulse Check: Ask a small group, "Why do you think we are doing this?" If their answers don't match your goals, you have an Awareness problem.
- Identify the "Resistance Points": Is the pushback coming from a lack of desire or a lack of ability? You handle those very differently. A lack of desire needs a conversation with a manager; a lack of ability needs a training session.
- Appoint Change Champions: Find the people who do have the Desire and Ability. Let them lead. People listen to their peers more than they listen to a VP they see once a quarter.
- Ditch the Old Tools: If you want people to use the new system, turn off the old one. It sounds harsh, but it’s the most effective form of Reinforcement.
Change isn't a one-time event; it's a capability you build. Organizations that master the individual transition are the ones that survive when the market shifts. Stop treating your employees like components in a machine and start treating them like the primary drivers of your success. That shift in mindset is the most important change of all.
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To get started, pick one specific department currently struggling with a new process. Instead of scheduling another training session, sit down and assess where they are on the ADKAR scale. You’ll likely find that the bottleneck isn't what you thought it was. Address the actual barrier—whether it's Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, or Reinforcement—and watch the friction disappear.