KEVSTEMPLATES.COM
Sources and Further Reading
Where the material in this toolkit comes from, and what’s worth reading next.
Primary frameworks
COM-B and the Behaviour Change Wheel — Susan Michie, Lou Atkins and Robert West, The Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions (Silverback, 2014). Developed at UCL from a synthesis of 19 existing behaviour change frameworks. The most rigorous diagnosis-to-intervention model available, and the backbone of this toolkit. UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change publishes free resources. → UCL Behaviour Change resources · ModelThinkers summary
EAST — Behavioural Insights Team, EAST: Four Simple Ways to Apply Behavioural Insights (2014, updated 2024). Free PDF, about 50 pages, the single best practical read on this list. → BIT publication · OECD OPSI summary · The Decision Lab reference
ADKAR — Jeff Hiatt / Prosci. Prosci’s ongoing benchmarking research is the main source for the finding that active and visible sponsorship is the largest single contributor to change success. → Prosci on the primary sponsor’s role · Prosci change management success
Transitions — William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change (4th ed., 2016). Short, humane, and the best thing written on the emotional side of organisational change.
Switch — Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010). The most readable, and the best source of language for talking to executives.
Diffusion of Innovations — Everett Rogers (5th ed., 2003). Dense but foundational.
Nudge / choice architecture — Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: The Final Edition (2021). The final edition is notably more measured about effect sizes than the original, which is itself instructive.
Habits — Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits (2019). The research-grounded one; stronger than the popular alternatives on the role of context and friction.
On the “70% failure” myth
The statistic has no reliable empirical basis. It traces to 1990s business-process-reengineering consulting material and was never supported by peer-reviewed evidence.
- Mark Hughes, “Do 70 Per Cent of All Organizational Change Initiatives Really Fail?”, Journal of Change Management (2011) — the standard academic critique. → ResearchGate
- Accessible summary of the origins and the counter-evidence: Debunking the myth
Where outcomes have been examined properly, most initiatives land in the middle — partial success — with outright failure a minority. The practical implication: change usually half-lands, and closing that gap is the job. → Myths and Traps in Change Management
Worth knowing about, with caveats
Kotter’s 8 Steps — the most widely known change model, and useful as a checklist of things not to forget. Weak as a diagnostic: it tells you what to do, not what’s wrong. Best treated as a governance sequence rather than a behavioural tool.
Lewin’s Unfreeze–Change–Refreeze — historically important, and a poor fit for continuous change. Force Field Analysis, from the same author, has aged far better and is still genuinely useful.
Learning styles and MBTI-style typing — both common in change collateral, both weakly supported. Matching instruction to “learning styles” has repeatedly failed to show benefit; MBTI has known reliability and validity problems. Don’t build credibility on either. → Myths and Traps in Change Management
If you only read three things
- EAST (BIT) — free, 50 pages, immediately usable
- Managing Transitions (Bridges) — for the human side you’ll otherwise miss
- Switch (Heath) — for the language to use with senior leaders
Note on how this toolkit uses sources
Frameworks here are adapted for a corporate change context rather than reproduced verbatim — most originate in public health or public policy, where the populations, incentives and ethics differ. Where the adaptation is a stretch, the note says so. If you’re presenting any of this as evidence-based to a sceptical audience, go to the primary source first; the summaries here are working tools, not citations.
→ Glossary · Toolkit Map (MOC)
← Back to the Behavioural Change Toolkit