What Is the ADKAR Model?
ADKAR is a change management model created by Jeff Hiatt, the founder of Prosci, and introduced in his 2006 book ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and Our Community. The acronym stands for five outcomes an individual must achieve, in order, for any change to succeed: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.
Most change management models operate at the organizational level — they describe what leaders should do to drive a company through transformation. ADKAR takes a fundamentally different approach. It starts with the premise that organizational change only happens when the individuals inside the organization change. A new system, process, or structure is only as effective as the people who adopt it.
This individual focus is what makes ADKAR both distinctive and practical. Rather than asking "How do we roll this out?" it asks "What does each person need to move forward?" That shift in perspective is often the difference between a change initiative that sticks and one that quietly reverts within six months.
The Five Elements of ADKAR
Each element is sequential. You cannot skip ahead, and each one must reach a sufficient threshold before the next becomes possible. Think of them as gates: if someone is stuck at Desire, no amount of training (Knowledge) will move the change forward.
1. Awareness
The person understands why the change is happening. This is not a vague sense that "something is different" — it means they can articulate the business reasons, the risks of not changing, and what the change means for them specifically. Without Awareness, people either ignore the change entirely or fill the information vacuum with rumors and worst-case assumptions.
2. Desire
The person wants to participate in the change. Awareness alone is not enough — someone can understand exactly why a change is necessary and still choose not to support it. Desire is influenced by personal motivation, the perceived consequences of not changing, and trust in the people leading the effort. This is often the hardest element for leaders to influence because it cannot be mandated.
3. Knowledge
The person knows how to change. This includes both the technical knowledge required (new tools, processes, procedures) and the behavioral knowledge (what different looks like in daily work). Knowledge addresses the "how" — the skills, information, and understanding needed to operate in the new state. Training programs, documentation, and mentoring all contribute here.
4. Ability
The person can actually perform the change in practice. Knowledge and Ability are not the same thing. You can understand how to do something and still struggle to execute it under real conditions. Ability requires practice, time, coaching, and the removal of barriers that prevent someone from applying what they know. This is where many change efforts fail — the training happened, but people were never given the space to develop real competence.
5. Reinforcement
The change sticks. Without deliberate reinforcement, people revert to old habits — especially under stress. Reinforcement includes recognition, rewards, accountability mechanisms, feedback loops, and visible proof that the new way is producing better results. It is the difference between a change initiative and a lasting transformation.
When to Use ADKAR
ADKAR is especially effective in these situations:
- Technology rollouts: When a new system requires people to change how they work day-to-day. Adoption rates depend on individual readiness, not just technical deployment.
- Process redesigns: When existing workflows are being replaced and people need to abandon familiar routines for unfamiliar ones.
- Restructuring and role changes: When people's responsibilities, reporting lines, or team compositions shift. The emotional dimension of change — Desire — becomes especially critical here.
- Cultural shifts: When leadership is trying to change norms, values, or behaviors. These changes are invisible and difficult to mandate, making the individual-level focus of ADKAR particularly useful.
- Diagnosing stalled change: When an initiative has lost momentum and you need to pinpoint exactly where people are getting stuck. ADKAR gives you a precise diagnostic — is the problem Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, or Reinforcement?
Common Mistakes
- Jumping to training too early. Leaders often default to "we need more training" when a change is stalling. But if people lack Desire, training is wasted effort. Always diagnose the barrier point before choosing your intervention.
- Treating Awareness as a one-time announcement. A single email or town hall does not create Awareness. People need to hear the rationale multiple times, from multiple sources, with space to ask questions and process the implications for their own work.
- Neglecting Reinforcement entirely. Once the initial push is over, leadership attention moves to the next priority. Without sustained reinforcement — recognition, measurement, visible consequences — people quietly slide back to the old way of working.
Putting ADKAR Into Practice
Consider a product team transitioning from waterfall to agile delivery. The project manager announces the shift (Awareness), but several senior developers resist because they see no personal benefit in changing a process that already works for them. The barrier point is Desire, not Knowledge.
Instead of scheduling Scrum training, the leader spends time in one-on-one conversations understanding each developer's concerns. Some worry about losing autonomy. Others fear that standups will become micromanagement. By addressing these concerns directly and showing how agile actually increases individual ownership, the leader builds Desire before moving to Knowledge.
Once training begins, the team practices with a low-stakes pilot project (Ability), and the leader publicly celebrates the first sprint that delivers ahead of schedule (Reinforcement). Six months later, the team is running agile without prompting — because the change was built person by person, in the right order.
Cabinet's coaching sessions walk you through this kind of diagnostic thinking, helping you identify barrier points on your team and choose the right intervention for each individual — rather than applying a single approach to everyone.