How do we handle stakeholders who say they support change but do not act on it?
This is the Agreement-Action gap at the stakeholder level, and it is one of the most expensive problems in organizational change because it consumes months of alignment effort with no behavioral payoff.
A stakeholder who says "I fully support this" and then does not allocate resources, adjust timelines, or model the new behavior is not lying. Their reflective motivation is real: they believe in the change. But their behavior is governed by what is strongest at the moment of action, and the old priorities, existing commitments, and comfortable routines are almost always stronger.
The Stakeholder Decision Matrix, part of the SHIFT methodology, classifies seven stakeholder types (Executive Sponsor, Line Manager, Peer Team Lead, Subject Matter Expert, Frontline Staff, Enabling Function, Senior Influencer) and maps each to specific barriers and strategies.
For an Executive Sponsor who supports but does not act:
The barrier is usually opportunity (competing priorities, no structured mechanism for follow-through) or automatic motivation (old decision habits override new commitments). The intervention is not more persuasion. It is designing specific behavioral commitments: "At the next quarterly review, you will ask each team lead to report on one specific adoption metric." Implementation intentions work for executives too.
For a Line Manager who agrees but does not cascade: the barrier is often capability (they do not know how to translate the strategy into team-level action) combined with social opportunity (no peer managers are doing it, so it feels exposed). The intervention is role-specific practice combined with a coalition of managers who move together.
The principle is consistent: stop trying to increase support (they already support it) and start diagnosing why the support is not converting to action. Then design the intervention to address that specific gap.
