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The innovation is ready. The client system environment is ready. The change agents are ready and trained, and a careful, collaborative plan has been generated. Representatives of all the key stakeholders have been involved throughout the process, and are satisfied that this change--and the way its implementation will be managed--is in the best interests of their organization. Appropriate resources have been identified and acquired, and the innovation has performed well in a trial for the change team. The hard part is over, right?
Many change agents have walked away at this point, their fees collected, and added another "success" to their resume. Many would likely do so today. However, while all the milestones in the previous paragraph do set up an ideal situation for change (better than most of us will ever encounter!), the point where most innovations fail and are discontinued still lies ahead.
Ultimately, innovations are adopted (or rejected) at the system level--frequently, several system (or subsystem) levels--and at the individual level. Unfortunately for the change agent, no change team can ever be "representative enough" for the level of adoption described above to settle the matter--and no client system can ever be autocratic enough for a "decision from the top" to suffice. Each individual user will try the innovation in his own practice, and will make an independent adoption/rejection decision. If enough of these individual decisions go against an innovation--even in a system as centralized as the military--it will almost surely fail, even if only because it is plagued by a seemingly endless series of unexpected "glitches" (Ellsworth, 1998, p. 7). Understanding how these individual decisions operate, as well as the motives and uncertainties underlying them--and addressing those motives and uncertainties to achieve a favorable resolution--calls for a focus on the intended adopter couched in the context of the change effort as a whole.
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