Behavioral Science for Change and Transformation Leaders
The Problem You Are Facing
You have a transformation strategy. You have executive sponsorship. You have communicated the vision, trained the teams, and set the milestones. Yet adoption stalls. People nod in meetings and revert to old behaviors at their desks. Timelines slip. Resistance surfaces in passive, hard-to-address ways. The board asks why the transformation is not delivering on its promise.
This is not a communication problem. It is not a sponsorship problem. It is a behavioral problem: the gap between what people agree to do and what they actually do at the moment of action. Every transformation initiative contains hundreds of specific behavior changes. When those behaviors do not happen, the transformation does not land.
Why Standard Approaches Fall Short
Most change management approaches operate on an assumption behavioral scientists call the Information Deficit Model: if people understand why they need to change, they will change. This drives investment in town halls, leadership messaging, alignment workshops, and training. These are not wrong. But they address only one dimension of a three-part equation. The COM-B model shows that behavior requires Capability (can they do it?), Opportunity (does the environment support it?), and Motivation (is it worth doing at the point of action?). Communication and training primarily address Capability and reflective Motivation. They do not touch Opportunity (system defaults, workflow friction, social norms) or automatic Motivation (habits, impulses, emotional responses at the moment of action).
The result: organizations that do everything right by the change management playbook and still cannot explain why adoption is not where it should be. The missing piece is diagnostic precision.
What a Behavioral Approach Looks Like
The SHIFT framework provides that diagnostic precision. For each transformation workstream, we Specify the exact target behaviors (not 'adopt the new operating model' but 'use the new escalation pathway when a client issue arises'). We Hypothesize the barriers using COM-B diagnosis (is the escalation pathway too cumbersome? Do peers still use informal channels? Does the old approach feel safer?). We design Interventions matched to those specific barriers using 33 strategy cards that combine evidence-based techniques with practical delivery mechanisms.
The output is a behavioral design layer that sits underneath your existing change framework. It does not replace your governance, communication, or stakeholder engagement. It adds the diagnostic precision that tells you which interventions to deploy where, based on what is actually blocking behavior change. When adoption stalls, you have a system for identifying why and adjusting, rather than defaulting to more communication or more pressure.
If your transformation has strong sponsorship, clear communication, and deployed training, and adoption is still stalling: the missing piece is behavioral diagnosis. The barriers are specific, diagnosable, and addressable.
