The change company that runs on a system.
IMA Worldwide runs AIM. It is a system: eleven scored conditions, ten playbooks, and an assessment that tells you which gap to close first.
Every recommendation traces to a scored assessment, not an opinion.
Illustrative only. Your bands come from your own assessment data, not from this page.
Installation is not implementation.
Most change clears the first bar and misses the second. The system goes live, and the results do not.
McKinsey counts a transformation as successful only if performance improved and the improvement stuck. On that test, roughly 70% fail (Harry Robinson, McKinsey, 2019). The distance between those two conditions is the gap on this page.
Buying the equipment is the easy part, and it is the part every project plan tracks. Whether anyone actually uses it is the part that decides the result, and it is usually the part nobody measures until it is too late to fix cheaply.
Boston Consulting Group studied roughly 1,700 transformations between 2004 and 2020 and found only 30% both met their target and produced sustainable change. A further 44% created value that did not last (BCG, 2021). That middle group is the treadmill.
| Installation | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Technology deployed | People consistently use it |
| Training completed | Behaviors change |
| Go-live achieved | Business results realized |
| Controlled by the project team | Dependent on sponsors and target groups |
AIM closes the gap between installing a solution and realizing its business value.
I am very impressed with your model and the emphasis on installation versus implementation. I have been involved with several change efforts where the reinforcement was not built into the design and we were left with an installation and lack of ROI.
How AIM measures change readiness.
AIM is a measurement-based change management methodology. It uses scored assessments and proven strategies to identify adoption risks, focus action, and sustain new behaviors until the change produces its intended business results.
We do not guess. We score.
Every recommendation traces to a scored assessment, not an opinion. Three named instruments do the measuring, and together they produce a single forecast: the probability this change is implemented, not just installed.
Eleven statements, about two minutes, scored against the IHA benchmark. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Reads how change has actually gone in your organization before.
Measures whether the people who must change are ready to.
Ranks where this particular change is most likely to break.
The thought leadership that IMA brings to the domain of project implementation, especially in relation to the role that Sponsors play in project success and the assessment tools that are available to define the gap that exists, is in my experience, unique.
AIM turns adoption risk into something leaders can see and act on.
What makes IMA different.
Most firms bring a framework. IMA brings a system. BCG’s 2026 analysis of the human side of transformation found that a human-centred approach can improve the odds of lasting results by up to 90%.
Every recommendation traces to a scored assessment, not an opinion. You see where adoption will break before you deploy, and you fix the risks in priority order.
The work continues into reinforcement until the new behavior holds. Most methods end at launch, which is exactly where adoption is usually lost.
The method is designed to be transferred to your own practitioners, so the capability outlasts any single engagement instead of leaving with the consultants.
Having led change management for several Fortune companies, I have reviewed and used multiple change management models. The best one that I have used, and that has moved the change needle the farthest, is the AIM approach from IMA.
The AIM roadmap.
The assessment tells you your probability of success. The roadmap tells you how to raise it. Each of the ten playbooks pairs a scored diagnostic with the actions that close the gap it finds, and your results decide which to run first, grouped here into four outcomes.
Define the change and assess the environment it has to land in.
Build sponsorship and change-agent capacity.
Prepare and involve the people affected by the change.
Reinforce adoption and monitor results past go-live.
What AIM changes in practice.
First-call resolution rose from 68% to 83%. Employee engagement rose from 73% to 88%.
A $70M implementation delivered on time, under budget, and with no reduction in scope.
You can spend enormous resources on implementation, but if you have failed to build the sponsorship for the change, you cannot spend enough money or have enough cross-functional meetings to be successful. Using AIM has been a key enabler for me and the organizations I have been in for the last 15 years.
Built for changes where adoption determines the result.
Resistance is a normal response to disruption. AIM earns its keep where adoption, not the technology, is the binding constraint. Gartner research found the average employee went through 10 planned enterprise changes in 2022, up from two in 2016 (O Morain and Aykens, Harvard Business Review, 2023).
Clinical workflow change where adherence is not optional and resistance is often clinically reasoned.
Two cultures, one operating model, and a synergy case that depends on people changing how they work.
The system goes live and the workarounds survive. Measured readiness before cutover, reinforcement after.
Tools deployed broadly, used narrowly. Readiness and trust decide usage far more than capability does.
Restructures that change reporting lines quickly and behavior slowly, unless reinforcement is designed in.
Many concurrent changes competing for the same finite capacity, where sequencing and organizational stress decide what actually lands.
Choose how AIM comes in.
The same method underneath. What differs is who runs it.
Get certified
Build individual practitioner capability.
- The full ten playbooks and the diagnostic set
- Licensed use of the instruments on your own programs
- A ladder from introduction through practitioner, trainer, and master
Train your organization
Establish a shared method across teams.
- Private cohorts scheduled around your program
- Separate tracks for practitioners and for leaders
- Executive briefings for the people who must sponsor the work
Support a critical change
Bring AIM practitioners into active work.
- Baseline diagnostic and ranked risk forecast
- Sponsorship contracted and monitored at every level
- Engagement continues past go-live, not up to it
Build an internal capability
Create a sustainable Change Center of Excellence.
- Standards, governance, and a common diagnostic baseline
- Internal trainers certified to teach the method
- A capability your own people run, so it outlasts any single program
Not sure where to begin? Talk with an AIM advisor.
The methodology is one of the best investments we have ever made.
What people ask us most.
What is the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM)?
AIM is a measurement-based change management methodology created by Don Harrison in 1989 and built on more than 40 years of implementation research. It uses scored assessments to identify where adoption is most at risk, focuses action on the highest-impact gaps, and keeps sponsorship and reinforcement active until the new way of working produces its intended business results.
How do you measure whether a change will be adopted?
AIM scores the conditions that determine adoption, including sponsorship, target readiness, resistance, organizational capacity, communication, and reinforcement. The scores combine into an overall read on the probability of implementation success, and the Implementation Risk Forecast ranks which gaps to close first.
How is AIM different from other change management frameworks?
Most frameworks describe a sequence of stages. AIM measures. Every recommendation traces to a scored assessment rather than an opinion, the work continues past go-live into reinforcement rather than ending at launch, and the method is designed to be transferred to your own practitioners instead of keeping consultants in the building.
When in a project should change management start?
Before design decisions are locked. The diagnostic is most valuable while sponsorship, scope, and sequencing can still be changed. Running it late still surfaces the risks, but the cheapest fixes are no longer available.
Build the conditions your change needs to succeed.
Tell us what you are changing. A senior AIM practitioner will walk you through the conditions most likely to put adoption and business results at risk, and what to do about them.
Talk with an AIM advisor