Embed: Making change stick

Part of our series introducing the AIK Advisory Elemental Method, Embed explores how involving people and designing for adoption from the outset helps organisations make change stick and realise lasting commercial value.

Investment in technology, data and transformation comes with high expectations. Better processes. Greater efficiency. More reliable information. New capabilities that help the business move forward.

But introducing new tools or data is only part of the challenge.

A new system can be implemented successfully, a policy approved or a process redesigned, without changing much about how people actually work. 

And that's where the value of an investment can begin to unravel.

When change doesn't stick

Most organisations will recognise the frustration.

A new system goes live, but people continue using their old spreadsheets. A carefully designed process is bypassed because the existing way feels quicker. A policy is published, but few people understand how it affects their day-to-day responsibilities.

The investment has been made. The intended benefits remain frustratingly out of reach.

Sometimes the consequences are more significant. Information becomes inconsistent because people work in different ways. AI adoption disappoints because teams lack the understanding or confidence to use it effectively. Governance becomes an exercise in documentation rather than something that genuinely shapes behaviour.

And businesses can end up paying twice. Once for the original investment and again for the workarounds, inefficiencies and additional effort needed to compensate for poor adoption. 

The challenge is making new ways of working part of everyday business.

Making change part of everyday practice

Lasting change can only happen when it is lived. Every day.

That requires shared understanding. People need to know what's expected of them, have the capabilities to deliver and be able to work effectively within the new arrangements.

And, perhaps most importantly and most often overlooked, organisations need to recognise how threatening change can feel. Whether that's a perceived loss of status, such as through reduced access to information or decision-making autonomy, or, more fundamentally, concern about future employment. 

Embedding change is often a question of leadership. People don't always need to be comfortable with change, but they do need to understand and engage with it. Leadership is about painting a vision of the future and bringing empathy to support it.

And that thinking needs to begin with design. It can't be the last item on a transformation to-do list. By then, important opportunities to make it work may already have been missed.

The approach needs to reflect how the organisation actually operates. Or, at the very least, take account of what will be asked of people and how it will make them feel, particularly if the change is more radical. 

A process that looks straightforward on paper may create difficulties in everyday use. A governance policy might satisfy formal requirements but become ineffective if it's too complicated to follow. Even good technology can disappoint if it doesn't fit naturally with the work people need to do.

Resistance isn’t always resistance. It might simply be that the design process hasn’t accounted for operational realities. 

Involving people in shaping practical solutions helps uncover those issues early. It also builds the understanding, ownership and confidence needed to maintain new ways of working.

That doesn’t mean design by committee, or not making the tough decisions. It does mean having a very clear view of the consequences of them.

Because change has to survive beyond the project that introduced it.

Building capability that lasts

Embed ensures that the practicalities of making change stick are considered from the beginning of a project. Bringing the people who need to understand, adopt and maintain new ways of working into the process. So that governance, processes and behaviours become part of everyday practice.

AIK Advisory brings decades of experience helping organisations put strategy into practice. We work collaboratively with leadership and operational teams, bringing people together to build shared understanding and develop approaches that work for the business and the people within it.

It’s an approach that means momentum takes the place of friction, capabilities are embedded and commercial value is realised for the long term.