The ADKAR Model in Practice

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you learned the three core change management frameworks — Kotter’s 8 Steps for organizational momentum, ADKAR for individual adoption, and Bridges Transition Model for psychological transition. Now you’ll go deep on ADKAR — the most practical diagnostic tool for understanding why specific people aren’t adopting and what to do about it.

ADKAR as a Diagnostic Tool

ADKAR’s real power isn’t as a checklist — it’s as a diagnostic. When someone isn’t adopting a change, ADKAR tells you exactly where they’re stuck. And the intervention for each stage is completely different.

The diagnostic rule: People get stuck at the first stage they haven’t completed. If someone lacks Awareness, giving them training (Knowledge) is wasted effort. If someone has Knowledge but lacks Ability, more training won’t help — they need coaching and practice.

Help me diagnose where my team is stuck using the
ADKAR model.

Change: [describe the change you're implementing]
Current state: [describe what you're observing —
who's adopting, who isn't, what they're saying]

For each ADKAR stage, assess my team:
1. Awareness: Do they understand WHY this change
   is happening?
2. Desire: Do they WANT to participate?
3. Knowledge: Do they know HOW to do the new thing?
4. Ability: Can they actually DO it in daily work?
5. Reinforcement: Is the change sticking over time?

Then identify the bottleneck stage and recommend
3 specific interventions for that stage.

Stage-by-Stage Interventions

Here’s what to do once you’ve identified the bottleneck:

Awareness Interventions

When people don’t understand why the change is happening:

Intervention	How It Works
Personal conversation	Manager explains the why in a 1-on-1 — the most effective single intervention
Data presentation	Show the specific numbers that make the case for change
Peer testimonials	People who’ve experienced the problem share their stories
Competitive context	Show what competitors or industry leaders are doing differently

What doesn’t work: Mass emails, town halls without Q&A, or telling people to “read the announcement.”

Desire Interventions

When people understand but don’t want to change:

Intervention	How It Works
Personal benefit framing	Show what’s in it for THEM — time saved, skills gained, frustration eliminated
Social proof	Highlight early adopters and share their positive experiences
Manager expectation	Their direct manager clearly states this is expected, not optional
Addressing fears directly	Name the fear (job loss, status change, incompetence) and address it honestly

✅ Quick Check: Why is the manager conversation the single most effective Awareness intervention? Because employees trust their direct manager more than any other communication channel. Research consistently shows that people form their understanding of change primarily through their immediate supervisor — not from executive emails or company announcements. A 10-minute conversation with your manager about why this change matters is more effective than a 30-minute town hall with the CEO.

Knowledge Interventions

When people want to change but don’t know how:

Role-specific training — not generic overviews, but “here’s how this changes YOUR daily workflow”
Worked examples — show the new process step by step with real data
Reference guides — cheat sheets for the top 5 tasks they’ll do most often
Peer learning — pair people who know with people who don’t

Ability Interventions

When people completed training but can’t execute in practice:

On-the-job coaching — someone sitting with them during their first real attempts
Protected practice time — permission to be slow and make mistakes while learning
Super-users — one person per team who’s proficient and available for questions
Simplified first steps — start with the easiest 20% of the new system, then expand

Reinforcement Interventions

When people adopted but are sliding back to old habits:

Recognition — publicly celebrate adoption milestones and early wins
Old system sunset — remove the option to revert (carefully, with support in place)
Metrics visibility — show adoption dashboards so people see collective progress
Feedback integration — use early adopter feedback to improve the change

✅ Quick Check: Why is the Knowledge→Ability gap the most common bottleneck in change initiatives? Because training teaches what to do, but ability requires doing it under real work conditions — with time pressure, messy data, interruptions, and muscle memory pulling you back to old habits. Organizations overinvest in training (Knowledge) and underinvest in coaching, practice time, and on-the-job support (Ability). The gap between knowing and doing is where most changes die.

Key Takeaways

ADKAR is a sequential diagnostic tool — people get stuck at the FIRST uncompleted stage, and the intervention must match that stage (Awareness problems need communication, not training; Ability problems need coaching, not more presentations)
The manager conversation is the single most effective Awareness intervention — employees trust their direct manager over every other channel
The Knowledge→Ability gap is the most common bottleneck — organizations overinvest in training and underinvest in coaching, practice time, and on-the-job support
“I haven’t had time” usually signals a Desire gap, not a time management problem — it means the person hasn’t found a personal reason to prioritize the change
AI can help diagnose ADKAR stages at scale by analyzing employee survey responses, support ticket patterns, and adoption data to identify which stage each team is stuck at

Up Next: You’ll learn to build the communication plan that makes or breaks change adoption — crafting messages that build urgency, address resistance, and sustain momentum through AI-assisted multi-channel communication.