Contents
- What change management covers
- ”70% of transformations fail”: a figure to handle with care
- Why transformations stall: technology is rarely to blame
- The sponsor: carrying the change, not just signing it off
- Line managers as relays: the link that decides adoption
- Communicating: the why, repetition and listening
- Set milestones and measure adoption, not just go-live
- Self-test: is your transformation at risk of stalling?
- From go-live to adoption
The new ERP works, the data has been migrated, and the vendor has closed the project. Yet six months later, orders still go through a shared Excel file and every branch has kept its old habits. The technology was delivered, but the change never happened.
Change management covers the actions that take an organisation from one way of working to another, all the way to real use by the people concerned. When a transformation stalls, the tool is rarely to blame: the sponsor disappears after the launch, managers do not know what to tell their teams, communication boils down to a single announcement, and the project is judged on go-live rather than on adoption. The method rests on five levers: the sponsor, line managers as relays, communication, milestones and measuring adoption.
What change management covers
A transformation changes a tool, a process or an organisation. Change management deals with what happens next for the people involved: understanding why things are changing, giving up a way of working they have mastered, learning the new one, then adopting it with no going back.
In French, you will hear conduite du changement, gestion du changement and accompagnement du changement (leading, managing and supporting change). The three expressions are mostly used interchangeably, and all of them correspond to change management. One caution: in IT departments, change management also refers to controlling the changes made to systems.
The American author and consultant William Bridges popularised a useful distinction. Change is an external event: a switchover date, a new organisation chart, new software. Transition is the inner process each person goes through: the ending of the old way of doing things, a neutral zone in between, then a new beginning. A change can be planned to the day, whereas a transition does not move at the same pace for everyone. That is why a project can be a technical success and still unfinished on the human side.
”70% of transformations fail”: a figure to handle with care
You have probably read that 70% of change projects fail. The most quoted version of the claim comes from an article by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria, published in the Harvard Business Review in 2000: “The brutal fact is that about 70% of all change initiatives fail.”
The figure does not stand up to scrutiny. In 2011, Mark Hughes, a researcher at the University of Brighton, examined the five published sources most often invoked to support it, and concluded that there is no valid and reliable empirical evidence to back up this failure rate. And what does failing mean, anyway: missing the deadline, going over budget or falling short of the expected benefits? As long as the definition varies, an overall rate tells you nothing about your own project.
What is better documented is the gap between projects that receive change management support and the rest. Prosci, a firm specialising in change management, surveyed more than 2,600 practitioners: 88% of those whose change management programme was rated excellent met or exceeded their objectives, against 13% when it was rated poor. These are self-reported data, collected by a company that sells these methods: a correlation, not proof. Even so, the order of magnitude speaks for itself.
Why transformations stall: technology is rarely to blame
In 2020, Boston Consulting Group combined a survey of 825 executives with its work at 70 companies to understand what sets successful digital transformations apart. It identifies six decisive factors: an integrated strategy with clear goals, commitment from leaders from the CEO through to middle management, high-calibre talent, agile governance that drives adoption, effective monitoring of progress, and a modular technology and data platform led by the business. Only one of the six is about technology.
The same holds for artificial intelligence. According to BCG, 10% of the value of an AI transformation comes from the application itself, 20% from data and technology, and 70% from redesigning ways of working, culture, governance and collaboration between humans and AI.
Digital transformation in Morocco is no exception. The public effort is real: according to the Chef du gouvernement (Morocco’s Head of Government), speaking in June 2026 about the Digital Morocco 2030 strategy, public investment in digital rose from 11 million dirhams in 2021 to more than 1.7 billion dirhams in 2024 (in French). Inside companies, an ERP, a CRM or the digitisation of a process only delivers its value if teams, at head office and in the branches alike, change the way they work.
The symptoms of a transformation that is getting bogged down look much the same from one company to the next:
| Observed symptom | Likely human cause | Lever to pull |
|---|---|---|
| The steering committee empties after the launch | The sponsor has delegated the subject and no longer shows up | The sponsor |
| Teams find out about the change from an internal memo | Frontline managers were not prepared | Line managers as relays |
| Rumours travel faster than official messages | Communication is top-down and one-off | Communication |
| The project seems never-ending, and fatigue sets in | No visible progress for months | Milestones |
| The tool is live, but a parallel file survives | The project was judged on go-live, not on use | Measuring adoption |
The sponsor: carrying the change, not just signing it off
The sponsor is the executive with authority over the people whose work is going to change, not necessarily the one who pays for the tool. In a group subsidiary, it is the local managing director, even when the decision comes from head office. In a family business, it is often the founder.
The role carries a lot of weight. In Prosci’s studies, active and visible executive sponsorship has ranked as the top success factor for more than 25 years, and projects that have it are six times more likely to meet or exceed their objectives. The word that matters is “visible”: a sponsor who signs the project brief and then disappears sends a message that everyone understands.
Nor can the sponsor carry the project alone. John Kotter, who watched more than a hundred companies try to transform themselves, makes building a coalition, a group of committed people who guide the change, the second of the eight steps of his method. In practice, this starts with the other members of the leadership team: if the sales director hints that the new CRM “will blow over like the others”, the sponsor has already lost some ground.
| Moment | What the sponsor does |
|---|---|
| Before the launch | Explain in person why things are changing. Secure explicit commitment from peers. |
| During the roll-out | Settle conflicts between priorities quickly. Ask about usage in project reviews, not just about the schedule. |
| After go-live | Use the new tool personally, recognise the teams that are making progress, refuse quiet returns to the old process. |
A simple test: if your employees name the project manager or the vendor as the person driving the project, the sponsor has not yet stepped into the role.
Line managers as relays: the link that decides adoption
The sponsor sets the course, and frontline managers decide, often without realising it, whether their teams will follow. Their attitude shows straight away: a manager who sighs while presenting the new process has already done their communication.
Prosci describes five roles for managers during change, grouped under the acronym CLARC: communicator (they explain to their team what changes for them), liaison (they pass feedback from the ground back to the project), advocate (they visibly support the change), resistance manager (they look for the real cause behind any reluctance) and coach (they give each person the training and support they need). The same article reports that 63% of respondents feel their organisation does not adequately prepare managers to lead change. For managers to take on these roles, give them four things:
- A head start. A manager who hears the announcement at the same time as their team can neither reassure people nor answer their questions.
- A short kit. The why in three sentences, what changes and what stays the same for the team, the timetable, and who to pass unanswered questions to.
- A channel for feedback. A regular check-in with the project team, where their feedback gets an answer.
- Time. If their usual objectives stay unchanged during the roll-out, the hours needed to support their teams will simply not exist.
In a multi-site organisation, this link is decisive: for a branch in Fez or Tangier, the local manager is often the only voice of the project. These roles can be learned, for example in TakeUp’s training programmes for managers and project managers, which work on leadership stance.
Communicating: the why, repetition and listening
A message is not understood just because it has been sent. The gap between what is said and what is taken in also shows up with strategic priorities, as our article on the difference between agreeing and being aligned explains. Three rules make the difference:
- The why before the what. Start from the problem the change solves, in concrete terms: less re-keying of data, customer deadlines met, visibility over stock. The tool comes after.
- What stays the same. The customers, the team and the business know-how remain: saying so reassures people as much as announcing what is moving.
- Two voices, several channels. The sponsor explains the company’s reasons, and the manager explains what it changes for the team. A message needs to go out several times, in several forms, and in the language people use on the ground: an announcement written in French at head office sometimes works better when a workshop supervisor repeats it out loud, in Arabic or Darija.
Plan the reverse route too: where questions go, who answers them and how quickly. Here is the backbone of a communication plan:
| Moment | Who speaks | Main message |
|---|---|---|
| One month before | The sponsor | Why things are changing, what stays the same, the timetable |
| Two weeks before | Each manager | What changes for the team, who will be trained and when |
| Switchover day | The project team and the managers | Where to find help, how to report a problem |
| Two weeks after | Each manager | What is not working, what has been fixed |
| Two months after | The sponsor | The first adoption results, the adjustments decided |
Set milestones and measure adoption, not just go-live
Without visible results along the way, fatigue sets in and the sceptics start to speak up. Kotter devotes the sixth step of his method to short-term wins, with a phrase that sums up the idea: “Wins are the molecules of results.” Break the roll-out into short milestones, each with a result that everyone can see: a pilot site that has fully switched to the new tool, a monthly report that used to take two days and now comes out in an hour. Announce these wins, name the teams that achieved them, and fix problems on the pilot before you extend.
Then measure what counts. A project judged on go-live declares itself a success at the precise moment the real work begins. What you need to track is adoption:
| Indicator | What it measures | Example of a measure |
|---|---|---|
| Usage | Are people using the new tool? | Weekly active users, transactions going through the new process |
| Proficiency | Do they use it without help? | Trend in support requests, data entry errors |
| Workarounds | Is the old process still alive? | Parallel files, approvals by email outside the tool |
| Sentiment | How is the change being experienced? | A three-question survey, every month |
| Expected benefit | Is the change delivering on its promises? | Processing time, error rate, time taken to close the month |
Set a target and a date for each indicator before the launch, review them every month in the steering committee, and only close the project once the adoption targets are met. A parallel file is rarely an act of rebellion: more often than not, it reflects a need that the new tool does not cover. Go and find out which one.
Self-test: is your transformation at risk of stalling?
Tick the statements that are true for your current project.
- The sponsor still attends project reviews, not just the launch.
- The other members of the leadership team defend the project in front of their teams.
- Managers were informed before their teams and have a kit to talk about it.
- Their objectives were lightened during the roll-out.
- Every employee concerned can explain in one sentence why things are changing.
- Questions from the ground get an answer within a week.
- A visible win has been achieved and announced in the last three months.
- The steering committee tracks actual usage, not just the schedule and the budget.
Six boxes or more: your transformation is well supported, so keep up the pace until you reach the adoption targets. Between three and five: the project rests on too few people, so start with the weakest lever. Fewer than three: the risk of getting bogged down is real, so go back over the people side of your scoping before extending the roll-out. If the leader is carrying execution alone, co-leadership can give them a partner.
From go-live to adoption
Before your next steering committee, ask a single question: how many people have actually been working differently since the launch? If nobody can answer, change management has not started yet, even if the tool works perfectly. TakeUp Consulting, in Rabat and Casablanca, supports project steering and change management, from scoping to the final review, as well as digital transformation projects. To take stock of a project that is stalling or just getting started, tell us about your context.
