Transformation Roundtable: Building Adoption and Change Capability into PPM
We recently brought together transformation, project portfolio management (PPM) and change leaders for a conversation about one of the biggest challenges in delivering successful change: making sure the value of a project actually lands once the project itself is complete.
Hosted by John Cusworth, the session featured insights from Surinder Dhillon, who shared his experience of building change management capability at Hologic, alongside an open discussion about the pressures other organisations are facing.
From stretched resources and competing priorities to measuring adoption and getting senior leaders to recognise the value of change management, there were plenty of familiar challenges around the virtual table.
One point came through particularly strongly: a project can be delivered on time and within budget, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the organisation has realised the value it set out to achieve.
Here’s what stood out:
1. Delivery Doesn’t Guarantee Value. Adoption Does
The conversation opened with a challenge that many organisations will recognise. Projects are marked green, milestones are met and new systems or processes are delivered, but what happens once they reach the people expected to use them?
Surinder shared his experience at Hologic, where significant growth in the diagnostics business following COVID had brought a huge increase in programmes, acquisitions, commercial initiatives and new people. The organisation was moving quickly, but the volume of change was creating pressure across teams.
Looking at individual projects, some appeared to have been delivered successfully. However, post-delivery reviews revealed that people weren’t always using new systems or processes as intended. In some cases, old workarounds continued, meaning further investment and additional project phases were needed before the expected benefits could be realised.
The lesson: delivery milestones tell you whether something has been implemented. They don’t necessarily tell you whether it’s working, being used or delivering the intended business benefit.
2. Build the Case for Change Before Asking for Investment
One of the challenges Surinder explored was how to establish a change management function where one hadn’t previously existed.
Rather than going straight to leadership with a request for resource, he started by understanding where the organisation was experiencing difficulties and what the impact of those challenges looked like.
This involved speaking to sponsors, colleagues who had previously used change management, potential champions and teams who would need to work alongside the function. He also reviewed project lessons learned to identify where earlier consideration of adoption might have improved outcomes.
External benchmarking helped build the picture, too, including conversations with Gartner.
The approach that emerged: build the business case around problems the organisation already recognises. Show where a lack of adoption is creating additional work, investment or delivery risk, and make it clear what change capability could do to address those issues.
That gives senior leaders something tangible to consider, rather than asking them to invest in a function they may not yet fully understand.
3. You Don’t Need a Huge Change Team to Make an Impact
A recurring theme was the difficulty of supporting multiple initiatives when specialist change resource is limited.
Surinder explained how Hologic approached this by bringing in one change manager who could work across global, regional and divisional teams, rather than immediately building a large central function.
The role was deliberately focused on engaging people and understanding how change was being experienced across the organisation, as well as introducing the tools and processes needed to support individual projects.
A tiered approach to funding also helped. Some activity could be supported through existing budgets, while more substantial project involvement required teams to identify their own funding.
The discussion resonated with one participant, who described having eight project managers and one change manager spread very thinly across the organisation.
One suggestion from the group: build change capability into existing project management roles, rather than expecting one specialist to do everything. That might mean training project managers in the fundamentals, embedding change responsibilities into their processes and giving them ongoing access to a change specialist when they need additional support.
4. Make Change Visible Within the Portfolio
Another challenge raised was how to stop change management becoming a one-off initiative that gradually disappears from the conversation.
At Hologic, this meant making change visible throughout the project lifecycle, not simply introducing new templates and expecting people to use them.
Change deliverables were built into project management templates and checklists, while leadership awareness sessions, playbooks and training helped people understand what good change management looked like in practice.
The organisation also introduced change metrics into portfolio reporting, including a simple high, medium and low assessment of change load. This helped highlight where teams and functions were facing multiple initiatives at once, making it easier to identify pressure points and consider how work should be sequenced.
The point raised: if portfolio reporting only tells you what’s happening to time, cost and scope, you’re missing an important part of the picture. Understanding how much change people are experiencing can help identify risks before they affect delivery and adoption.
One principle from Surinder’s experience was particularly clear: a project shouldn’t be considered green if there is still a significant adoption risk.
5. Measure Whether People Are Adopting the Change, Not Just Whether You’ve Delivered It
The group also explored how organisations can measure adoption and connect it to the benefits set out in the original business case.
As Surinder acknowledged, this is an area Hologic is still developing, and there isn’t one metric that works for every project.
For a new system, for example, it might mean looking beyond how many people have completed training to understand how many are actually using it. For a pricing initiative, it could mean tracking whether sales managers are applying the new approach with customers.
For a product launch, simply reporting that it went live on time and within budget won’t tell you whether it’s likely to succeed. Looking at the sales funnel and customer response ahead of launch could provide a much earlier indication of whether the expected demand is there.
The takeaway: adoption measures need to reflect what success actually looks like for each initiative. The important thing is to think about those measures early, rather than waiting until a project has closed to discover that the expected benefits haven’t materialised.
6. Communications Are Important, But They Aren’t Change Management
The conversation also touched on a familiar frustration: organisations sometimes treat internal communications as a substitute for proper change management.
Newsletters, updates and announcements all have a role to play, but sending information out doesn’t necessarily mean people understand what is changing, why it’s happening or what it means for them.
The group discussed the importance of more tailored engagement, including workshops, conversations with teams, opportunities to ask questions and helping people understand the impact of change on their day-to-day roles.
Communications should be a partner in the process, not the whole process.
As the discussion highlighted: people need more than an announcement about a new system or way of working. They need to understand the reason for it, have the opportunity to engage with it and feel supported as they adapt.
7. The Right Change Manager Needs to Bring People With Them
When discussing how to build change capability, the group also explored what makes an effective change manager.
Surinder explained that when recruiting for the role at Hologic, he was looking for someone who could engage people across the organisation, build relationships and understand the wider culture and ways of working.
There was a conscious decision not to prioritise someone whose experience was purely focused on templates, processes and playbooks. Those things matter, but in an organisation building its change capability from scratch, the ability to influence, listen and bring people along was just as important.
The person appointed had experience across HR business partnering and project management, alongside a Prosci qualification.
The wider point: change managers need to be comfortable working with everyone from project teams to senior leaders. They need enough structure to bring consistency, but also the people skills to build trust, challenge constructively and make change relevant to the people experiencing it.
8. Could Project Lessons Learned Help Predict Where Change Will Struggle?
One of the more forward-looking parts of the discussion explored whether organisations could use their existing project data to identify potential adoption risks earlier.
Surinder shared an emerging idea being explored at Hologic: looking across lessons learned from different projects and divisions to identify recurring issues, rather than treating every problem as an isolated incident.
Patterns around cross-functional alignment, unclear ownership, slow decision-making and leadership engagement could offer clues about where future initiatives might struggle.
The thinking is still developing, but the ambition is to look beyond the immediate process or technical issue and understand the behaviours, relationships and organisational conditions sitting behind it.
An exercise suggested during the session: take the lessons learned from your last three key projects. Look beyond the obvious fixes and ask what was really driving the issues. Were people working in silos? Were decisions taking too long? Was ownership unclear? Could better systems thinking or leadership support have prevented the same problems recurring?
It was a useful reminder that project data can tell us more than whether something went wrong. It may also help us understand why, and where to focus support next time.
Our thanks to Surinder for sharing his experience so openly, and to everyone who contributed to the discussion. It’s always valuable to hear how other organisations are tackling similar challenges, particularly when the answers aren’t necessarily straightforward.
The last mile of portfolio value is often the hardest to get right. But as this conversation showed, making adoption visible, building change into the way projects are managed and keeping people at the centre of delivery can make a real difference.
We’re planning further sessions on related topics in the coming months. If any of these challenges reflect what you’re experiencing in your own organisation, we’d genuinely like to hear how you’re approaching them.
Interested in joining a future roundtable, or want to find out more about the series? Get in touch below.
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