# ADKAR ADKAR is awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement: the stages each person passes through before a change takes hold. **The question.** For the people who have to change, which of the five stages is the first one they have not reached? Also known as: The five letters stand for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. ADKAR is a Prosci trademark. ## When to use it - A change program has run the communications and the training, and people still work the old way. You need to know which stage is actually missing. - Adoption differs by group, and an average "resistance" score hides that one team lacks awareness while another has knowledge and no desire. - Sponsors keep asking for more training, and you need a way to show that training cannot create desire or reinforcement. - You are planning the people side of a change and want a checklist at the individual level, next to an organizational sequence such as Kotter's. ## When to avoid it - The organization has not decided what will change. ADKAR assumes a defined change that a person can be aware of. Diagnose the design first. - The barrier is a missing owner, budget, or decision right, not an individual's path through the five stages. RACI or a design model fits better. - You need the certified Prosci method, including their assessments and role descriptions. This note is not a substitute, and reproducing their tools would breach their terms. - The change is a personal transition through loss, and the work is to help people let go of the old situation. Bridges addresses that directly. ## Overview ADKAR is a five-stage path for one person facing a defined change: awareness of why it is needed, desire to support it, knowledge of how, ability to do it in the real job, and reinforcement so it lasts. The practical use is to find the first stage a group has not reached, and to stop treating every adoption failure as a training problem. ADKAR is a Prosci trademark, and the firm's assessments and worksheets are licensed. The stages are sequential in the model, so work on the first weak one. Desire and reinforcement are where most programs are thin, because communications and courses are easier to buy. A low score is a diagnosis of where the person is, not a verdict on their character. Look next at the bonus, the weekly review, the tools, and the last change this group was asked to absorb. ## The five stages ### Awareness The person understands why the change is needed, in terms of their own work, not only as a company announcement. Evidence from their unit beats a network-level case for change. Without awareness, later stages look like extra work imposed from above. ### Desire The person chooses to support the change. Awareness does not produce it. Incentives, trust in leaders, the history of past changes, and the personal cost of the new way all sit here. Desire is the stage programs most often skip, then misread as a training gap. ### Knowledge The person knows what to do differently, including processes, tools, and the old habits to drop. This is what training can actually supply. Knowledge without desire is a completed course and no change in the job. ### Ability The person can perform the new way under real conditions, with time, coaching, and a workable process. A classroom pass is not ability. Ability fails when the system, the roster, or the tools make the new way harder than the old one. ### Reinforcement The new way continues to be measured, recognized, and required after go-live. If the bonus, the weekly review, and promotion criteria still reward the old behavior, people revert. Reinforcement is the stage that outlasts the program office. ## What it is not - An organizational change sequence. Kotter's steps build the conditions around people. ADKAR asks where each person is on the path. You usually need both, at different levels. - A license to diagnose "resistance" as a personal failing. A low desire or ability score is often a rational response to incentives, tools, or workload that the program has not changed. ## The steps 1. **Name the change and the people.** Write the new behavior in one sentence, and name the groups who have to do it. Score groups separately. An executive team and a frontline team are rarely at the same stage. 2. **Find the first missing stage.** For a sample of people, ask which of the five they have actually reached, with evidence, not a survey checkbox. The stage to work on is the first one that is weak, because later stages will not hold if an earlier one is missing. 3. **Diagnose why that stage is weak.** For awareness, check whether the case is local. For desire, check incentives, trust, and personal cost. For knowledge, check the training against the real task. For ability, watch the job, not the classroom. For reinforcement, read the bonus, the review, and who gets promoted. 4. **Act on that stage, not the next one.** Do not buy training for a desire gap, or send another email for an ability gap. Match the action to the stage. Put an owner on the change to the review, the roster, or the measure. 5. **Recheck after the first action.** Score the same groups again once the action has had time to land. If the first missing stage has moved and the next one is now weak, that is progress. If nothing moved, the diagnosis was wrong. ## In practice A business had put 220 sales representatives through a two-day CRM course. Eight weeks after go-live, only 31 percent of opportunities were being updated in the system. The sponsor asked for a refresher course. The consultant scored a sample of forty representatives, on a simple 1-to-5 of each stage, using interviews rather than a branded tool. Awareness averaged 4.2. People could explain why the company wanted a single pipeline. Desire averaged 2.1. Knowledge 3.8, ability 3.4, reinforcement 1.8. Managers still ran the Monday pipeline review from a spreadsheet each representative built on Sunday night, and the quarterly bonus still paid on activity logged in that spreadsheet. The first missing stage was desire, and the reason sat in reinforcement. The consultant stopped the refresher. The Monday review moved into the CRM, with the spreadsheet retired, and 20 percent of the bonus was tied to on-time opportunity hygiene. Usage was 74 percent twelve weeks later. Training had not been the constraint. ## What you leave with - A one-sentence statement of the new behavior, and the groups who must adopt it. - For each group, the first missing stage, with the evidence behind that call. - Actions matched to that stage, with owners, rather than a generic communications-and-training plan. - A date to score the same groups again. ## Failure points ### Training for a desire gap Completion rates rise and behavior does not. The program reports knowledge activity as progress, and the sponsor asks for more of it. ### One score for the whole organization A blended result says "desire is 3." One plant is unaware, another is able and unrewarded. The average points at nobody. ### Skipping reinforcement Go-live is treated as the end. The old measures and the old heroes remain, and the new behavior lasts as long as the program office is in the building. ### Treating low desire as defiance People who can see that the bonus, the roster, or the last three changes punished them are labeled resistant. The stage is diagnosed, the cause is not. ### Using the branded tool without the license A team copies a Prosci worksheet because the client asked for ADKAR. That is a trademark and copyright problem, and it is unnecessary. The five questions can be asked in your own words. The failures above are usually [Presence](https://usefulconsultingframeworks.com/your-edge/#presence): the framework was sound, but the attention of the stakeholders was not held. ## Origin Jeffrey M. Hiatt, founder of Prosci, developed ADKAR as a model of how an individual moves through a change. Prosci dates the work to the late 1990s. A white paper, "The Perfect Change," is often cited as an early public version around 1999, and Hiatt's 2006 book is the usual published source. The model is sequential. Awareness of why a change is needed, desire to support it, knowledge of how to work in the new way, ability to do so in the real job, and reinforcement so the new way lasts. Prosci's own materials say the stages cannot be skipped or reordered, and that the first weak stage is the barrier to work on. ADKAR is a registered trademark of Prosci, Inc. Prosci sells assessments, training, and certification built on the model, including a 1-to-5 score for each stage. This note describes the five stages in general terms and does not reproduce Prosci's worksheets, scoring thresholds, or proprietary process. If you need the certified method, use Prosci's materials under their terms. ## Further reading - [The Prosci ADKAR Model](https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar). Prosci's own page for the five stages and how the firm uses them. It is a commercial site. Use it to see their current wording, and do not copy their tools. - [Change management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management). Wikipedia's overview of organizational change, including a short section on ADKAR and Hiatt. Free. Check its sources before quoting, and treat it as orientation, not as the method. ## Related frameworks - [Kotter's 8 Steps](https://usefulconsultingframeworks.com/frameworks/kotter-8-steps/): A sequence for leading a large organizational change. Use Kotter to audit the program's conditions, and ADKAR to see where individuals in a given group actually stop. - [Bridges Transition Model](https://usefulconsultingframeworks.com/frameworks/bridges-transition/): Follows the inner path through an ending, a neutral zone, and a new beginning. Pick it when the block is loss of the old situation, not a missing stage of adoption. - [McKinsey Influence Model](https://usefulconsultingframeworks.com/frameworks/mckinsey-influence-model/): Names four conditions for a behavior change, including formal mechanisms and skill. Use it as a program-level checklist, and ADKAR to locate the first gap for a specific group. - [RACI](https://usefulconsultingframeworks.com/frameworks/raci/): Names who is accountable for each piece of work. Use it when the missing piece is an owner for reinforcement or for the new process, not a stage in the person's path. Last updated October 20, 2026.