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Frameworks · Change & Adoption

The frameworks behind the change work.

Where AI adoption actually fails — and how we read it.

Four frameworks we apply at the people-and-organization layer of every rollout — from the individual readiness conditions through the org-level choreography to the psychological transition happening underneath. AI adoption fails here more often than at the tooling layer.

ADKAR tracks readiness at the individual level. Kotter sequences the organization. Bridges names the internal transition that the change effort sits on top of. Diffusion of Innovations explains why most rollouts stall at the chasm between Early Adopters and the Early Majority — and how we sequence cohorts to cross it.

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ADKAR

Five conditions every individual needs before a new tool sticks: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. (Prosci)

Prosci's five-stage individual change model — the conditions a person needs before behaviour shifts: knowing the change is happening, wanting to engage, knowing how, being able to do it for real, and the reinforcement that stops it slipping back.

Use case
Diagnosing where each person sits on the adoption arc, before resistance becomes quiet non-adoption.

How Far West applies it
Tracks individual readiness across an AI rollout — from knowing the tool exists (Awareness) to using it without thinking (Reinforcement).

prosci.com · ADKAR Model

Kotter's 8-Step Model

Eight steps for moving an organization through change — from urgency through to anchoring change in culture. (Kotter Inc.)

John Kotter's eight-step framework for organizational change: create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a vision, enlist volunteers, remove blockers, generate short-term wins, sustain acceleration, anchor it in the culture.

Use case
Sustaining momentum across an enterprise rollout and embedding the change before declaring it done.

How Far West applies it
The org-level companion to ADKAR. Kotter sets the leadership choreography; ADKAR tracks the individuals inside it.

kotterinc.com · The 8-Step Process

Bridges Transition Model

The internal psychological journey through change — Ending, Neutral Zone, New Beginning. The "transition" underneath the "change."

William Bridges' model of the internal experience of change. Three phases — Ending / Losing / Letting Go, the Neutral Zone, the New Beginning — separating change, the external event, from transition, the internal experience.

Use case
Reframing resistance as transition in progress, not failure to adopt — especially when people say the right things but don't change their behaviour.

How Far West applies it
Communications and Coaching work. AI adoption hits this hard — people aren't resisting the tool, they're processing what it changes about their work identity.

wmbridges.com · William Bridges Associates

Diffusion of Innovations

The adoption curve — Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards.

Everett Rogers' adoption-curve theory. Each group adopts for different reasons: Innovators (~2.5%) want novelty, Early Adopters (~13.5%) advantage, Early Majority (~34%) proof, Late Majority (~34%) consensus, Laggards (~16%) compulsion. Most rollouts stall at the chasm Geoffrey Moore named, between Early Adopters and Early Majority.

Use case
Sequencing rollout cohorts deliberately: Innovators and Early Adopters first, set up as social proof for the majority — not training the whole org at once and hoping.

How Far West applies it
Connects to Far West's manager-visibility finding (Duke PNAS): visible AI users get judged as less capable — until their own manager uses AI too. That penalty-drop is why we sequence manager-first.

Simon & Schuster · Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. (Rogers)

Where this work shows up

Change-and-adoption frameworks anchor four service areas.

Where to start

If a rollout is stalling on adoption, the diagnostic surfaces which of these frameworks the next engagement should draw on.