You approved the investment. How much of it will your people actually use? PMI Digital forecasts how much of a transformation’s value is at risk, and in which divisions, before it is lost. Then we teach your managers to secure it. They keep that skill for every change that follows, so you stop paying for change management every time something changes.
A company invests $2,500,000 in a new system. The business case promises $5,000,000 a year in savings: $1,000,000 from cheaper licenses and maintenance, and $4,000,000 from people working the new way, at $8,000 a year for each of 500 people. The board approves it.
Then the benefit does not arrive. The software works. The people do not use it: the old spreadsheets stay open in a folder, the workaround survives, and someone else runs the report for the manager who never learned how.
Each shortfall gets a reason in a meeting. A minute later the meeting moves on, and the loss is never counted. It is not one company’s problem.
of business transformations fall short of their original ambition. Bain, 2024, more than 24,000 initiatives.
of corporate AI pilots show a measurable profit impact. MIT, 2025. Every company is investing in AI now.
The figure everyone quotes began in 1993 as an admitted guess. No study has ever backed it. Hughes, Journal of Change Management, 2011.
Transformations rarely fail on strategy. They fail on adoption: people keep working the old way, because no one taught them the new one.
A Pre-Mortem forecasts how much of the promised benefit each division is likely to deliver, and how much is at risk. It can run before the money is committed, during the rollout, or after it, when the results are not arriving.
How to read it: each bar is a division’s forecast adoption, meaning how many of its people are likely to work the new way. Next to it is what that division was expected to save, and how much of that is at risk. Green is 75% or more working the new way, yellow 50 to 74%, red under 50%.
Add the divisions together and Meridian has $2,000,000 a year at risk, half of its adoption savings, before anyone has noticed. Two divisions carry most of it.
Everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the front line, completes the Pre-Mortem©, a short eight-minute questionnaire. It forecasts adoption for every team and converts it into money at risk by division, using your own investment figures.
It can run before the money is committed, during the rollout, or after it, when results are not arriving.
Your managers learn our own training method, unique, easy to pass on and easy to repeat, in which the manager is the star: the manager shows the new work, has each person try it, corrects it, and confirms it is used in daily work.
They keep that skill. The next system, process or upgrade does not need outside change managers, even when all that changed was a button.
The same illustrative company, worked through. Every figure comes from the company’s own investment plan and its employees’ answers. Results are reported in the currency you work in, whether US dollars, yen, won or baht.
The full report separates the amount at risk into three parts, so your CFO sees a figure that does not double-count:
The decision for the executive is simple: what is it worth to protect $2,000,000 a year on a $2,500,000 investment?
The company-wide forecast, the result for every division, and one division named with the funds at risk in it.
Every division and manager, the money at risk in each, and an adoption plan for every manager.
Every manager teaches the new work and confirms it is used, with a method that is easy to pass on and repeat. The divisions most at risk receive more support.
With the CEO and sponsor: where adoption is verified, where it has stalled, and whether results move up the chain, not just instructions down.
On one rollout, reports looked perfect for months. Then a manager began taking leave at every month-end, because that was when the reports had to be run in the new system, and he had never learned how. Someone else was doing it for him.
We do not sell months of consultant time, stakeholder maps, communication plans or readiness surveys, and we do not run your transformation.
Your managers own adoption, and responsibility rises with each level, up to the CEO. We assess the risk, give your managers the method, and check that it is working. When we leave, the capability stays.
References available on request. Media coverage is cited for factual attribution; no endorsement is implied.
The full argument, the science behind it, and the operating model that replaces activity with adoption. Kindle, paperback and hardcover.
Buy on AmazonFor executives about to commit, or already committed, to a transformation, a system, a merger or an investment: a short conversation about what a Pre-Mortem would forecast for your organization.
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