Corresponding with the R of ADKAR, a Closure Report is Reinforcement for the new Customer Experience and formal declaration that the project is complete.

The big day! Showtime! Opening Night! Let your stakeholders know that the new experience is ready for them. The Go-Live Announcement fulfills the latter “A” in ADKAR.

Change is disruptive, so evangelize to stakeholders why your change is desirable, stylish, and cool. Formalize the “D” in ADKAR. Craft an Elevator Pitch to convey the benefits of the upcoming innovation.

At the start of every project, to accomplish the first “A” in ADKAR, notify your stakeholders. An Awareness Blast is a low-maintenance way to let stakeholders know they need to contribute, and they need to help to identify other stakeholders who need to contribute.

“K” - Knowledge - is the heart of ADKAR. Before you dig into detail of actual training material, put to paper all the expectations surrounding your training activities. Often, a Training Approach can apply across projects.

Innovation is often complicated, but the list of what makes innovation difficult is 12 not 1200. Project work has common problems. There is a pattern in the problems.

Your innovation team is a factory. Hopefully not just a factory of meetings and emails. Hopefully not just a software factory. Your collaborative team is an agreement factory.

Ruthless Grace is the combination of discipline and empathy. Ruthless - not cruelty or punishment - but the likelihood of a sunrise and sunset tomorrow. Grace reminds us that we are human and our teams are human.

To manage the People side of Change, apply a framework such as ADKAR (owned by PROSCI). Shepherd your stakeholders through Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement with corresponding assets.

Before you leap into testing a new process or technology, formalize the general expectations about test planning and execution. For example, the number of test phases, test environments, and the documentation expectations for the test plan.

Verb Sprawl is a real problem that slows teams down. In planning your team’s work, instead of governing meetings or emails, govern what is worth documenting outside email. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

Three metaphors give structure to the book. The metaphor of a factory shapes the Why. The metaphor of an Asset Portfolio - a documentation inventory forms the What. The metaphor of the Performing Arts shapes the How of the Innovation Factory.