Behavioral Science for PMO and Transformation Offices
The Problem You Are Facing
You track adoption dashboards, manage change activities, and coordinate across workstreams. But the data tells an uncomfortable story: completion rates look acceptable but actual behavior change does not match. Training is completed but the new process is not being used. Communication plans are executed but the feedback from the front line has not shifted. You are measuring activity, not behavior, and the gap between the two is where transformation value leaks.
Transformation offices are uniquely positioned to solve this problem because they see across workstreams. But they need a framework that connects program activities to behavioral outcomes, not just milestone completion.
The Behavioral Measurement Gap
Most PMO dashboards track leading indicators (training completion, communication reach, stakeholder engagement scores) and lagging indicators (adoption percentages, efficiency metrics, customer satisfaction). What sits between these two, and what neither captures, is whether the specified target behaviors are actually being performed, by whom, how often, and under what conditions. This behavioral middle layer is where value creation actually happens.
Without behavioral measurement, transformation offices cannot answer the critical question: when a workstream is underperforming, is the problem that the intervention is not being delivered (implementation failure) or that the intervention is being delivered but is not changing behavior (design failure)? These require completely different responses. Implementation failure needs better execution. Design failure needs re-diagnosis and a different intervention.
What a Behavioral Approach Adds to Your Operating Model
The SHIFT framework gives transformation offices a diagnostic layer that connects program activities to behavioral outcomes. For each workstream, target behaviors are specified with enough precision to measure. Barriers are diagnosed using COM-B. Interventions are selected from the 33 strategy cards based on the diagnosis, not based on the default change activities the organization always uses.
The Test and Iterate stage is particularly relevant for PMOs. It introduces rapid-cycle behavioral measurement: tracking whether target behaviors are occurring within four to six weeks of intervention deployment, not waiting for quarterly adoption reviews. When behaviors are not shifting, the data triggers re-diagnosis and strategy adjustment. This turns the transformation office from a program management function into a behavioral learning system.
The practical addition to your operating model: alongside your workstream milestones and change activity tracking, you add a behavioral performance layer that tracks whether the specific behaviors required for transformation value are actually happening. That layer tells you where to intervene, not just where activity has occurred.
The most common PMO blind spot: tracking activity completion (training delivered, communications sent) rather than behavior change (people doing the new thing). The SHIFT framework closes this gap with specified behaviors, COM-B diagnosis, and rapid-cycle behavioral measurement.
