KEVSTEMPLATES.COM
Choose Your Tool
Pick the sentence that sounds most like your week and it routes you, including the branch that separates “can’t” from “won’t”.
A decision tree for when you don’t know where to start.
“People aren’t using the new system.”
Do you know why yet — from talking to them, not from a survey?
- No → Barrier Analysis — COM-B Interview Guide. Six conversations will tell you more than a 400-response survey.
- Yes, they can’t (skill, tools, access) → Capability/Opportunity problem → Intervention Design Worksheet, look at Training and Enablement.
- Yes, they won’t (don’t see the point, prefer the old way) → Motivation problem → Social Norms and Influence + Resistance Decoder.
- Yes, they forget → habit problem → Habit Loop and Behavioural Drift + Nudge Library (prompts and defaults).
⚠️ The single most common error: assuming “won’t” when it’s “can’t”. Managers reliably over-attribute to attitude. See Myths and Traps in Change Management.
“We need a change plan by Friday.”
Change on a Page → fill it in → The One-Page Board Narrative for the exec version.
If you have 90 minutes with the right people first, run Workshop — Behavioural Diagnosis (90 min) and the plan writes itself.
“The sponsor isn’t showing up.”
Sponsor Briefing Pack to make the ask concrete → Leader Behaviour Contract to make it visible → Challenging Upward — Scripts if it continues.
Active, visible sponsorship is repeatedly identified as the largest single contributor to change success. A quiet sponsor is not a minor risk — it is the risk.
“Leadership say the right things but do the opposite.”
Executive Failure Modes (specifically Say–Do Gap) → Leader Behaviour Contract.
The organisation reads behaviour, not memos. One leader visibly bypassing the new process undoes six weeks of comms.
“There’s a lot of resistance.”
Resistance Decoder first. Resistance is almost always one of: unclear ask, real cost you haven’t acknowledged, loss of status/competence, prior broken promises, or a genuinely bad design. Only the last one is your fault, and only the last one is a compliment.
“We rolled out. Adoption spiked then dropped.”
Textbook drift. Habit Loop and Behavioural Drift → Drift Check — 30 60 90 → Embedding and Reinforcement.
The spike was novelty and supervision. The drop is the true baseline. Design for the drop.
“How do we know if it’s working?”
Measurement Plan — Leading and Lagging. If your only metric is “training completed” you are measuring attendance, not change.
“We need to change the culture.”
You can’t change culture directly. You change behaviours; culture is the residue. Go to Target Behaviour Definition and force the aspiration (“more collaborative”, “more accountable”) into observable actions. If you can’t film it, it isn’t a behaviour.
“Everyone’s exhausted — there’s too much change.”
Real and legitimate. Change Readiness Assessment has a saturation section. The honest advice to a senior leader is often sequence, or stop something. Bring them the list of what’s already running.
← Back to the Behavioural Change Toolkit