The situation
A professional services organization had introduced a shared operating model to improve coordination across locations.
The new model defined common processes, reporting expectations and decision responsibilities.
However, teams continued to use a mixture of old and new practices.
Managers interpreted requirements differently, employees were uncertain about priorities, and leadership lacked a consistent view of progress.
The organization had completed the initial rollout, but the intended change had not become everyday practice.
What we found
Arda Aris reviewed adoption patterns and spoke with managers about the obstacles their teams encountered.
The problem was not simply resistance to change.
Employees needed clearer examples, managers needed practical guidance, and the new process needed to fit into normal work routines.
Without these foundations, further announcements or training sessions were unlikely to solve the issue.
What we changed
We worked with leadership and local managers to make implementation more practical.
The work included:
Clarifying expectations for each team.
Defining a small number of essential workflows.
Creating consistent manager check-ins.
Introducing straightforward adoption tracking.
Reviewing obstacles and adjusting the rollout based on feedback.
The focus shifted from communicating the change to helping people use it consistently.
The result
+31 percentage points
Increase in workflow adoption
Share of teams consistently completing the agreed workflows over 90 days.
Over 90 days, adoption of the agreed workflows increased from 58% to 89%.
That is an improvement of 31 percentage points, measured by the share of teams consistently completing the required workflows.
This distinction matters: the result describes actual process adoption, not simply attendance at training sessions.
Why it mattered
Leadership gained clearer visibility into how the new operating model was being used across locations.
Teams worked with more consistent expectations, and managers could identify problems earlier instead of relying on informal updates.
The organization established a stronger foundation for maintaining the change after the initial implementation period.
