Adopting new tools or ways of doing things requires good communication, time, and headspace to allow for short term trade offs keeping the longer term benefits in mind.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience at Lean Agile Brighton listening to Sarah Wells deliver a thought provoking talk called The Challenge of Keeping Things Up-To-Date. Technically, she was speaking about technology architectures, dependency upgrades, and code health. But as I sat there, I kept thinking about how this so easily fits with Adoption. Getting human beings to adopt a new digital tool or process follows the exact same psychology.

Sarah was talking about why engineering teams put off updating software dependencies. The reason is rarely that engineers don’t care; it’s because updating things causes temporary friction. It risks breaking what’s currently working today in exchange for a currently-theoretical benefit tomorrow.

Building new tools, the software, the workflow, the digital solution, is hard. But getting people to actually use it? Well, that’s much harder.

People like to work in their comfort zones, even if they are slower

An agency can build the most elegant, responsive, beautifully architected tool on earth. But adoption rarely just happens. You may get lucky when rolling out a change and see that everyone starts using it. But, you’ve only succeeded when they still use it on the days when they are tired and stressed. Humans love to work in their comfort zone, so if the new tool feels clunky, unfamiliar, or intimidating, people revert back to their comfortable old ways, even if it is slower and even clunkier. We’ve all been there or seen it happen, when stress levels are high, we stop logging information in a Trello ticket, and start sending messages in Slack, get out a notepad and pen, or kid ourselves we’ll remember to do it later. We may even pull out our secret, unofficial, colour-coded spreadsheet that lives on our desktops because it feels safe.

Feature parity isn’t enough: the lesson from school

Before I stepped into delivery management at Unboxed, I was a secondary school teacher.

Back when I was in the classroom, a colleague once recommended I check out Miro. In the midst of marking piles, lesson planning, and managing thirty teenagers, the mere thought of learning a new visual collaboration platform felt impossible. My mental bandwidth was at zero. I didn’t use it. Now that I’m outside that high-stress environment, I look at Miro and think, “That would have saved me so much time (and paper)!” But when stress is high, the friction barrier feels ten feet tall.

On the other hand, my school once introduced a new digital seating plan software, and the adoption was practically instantaneous. Why?

Three major reasons:

1. The timing. They rolled it out right before the new academic year began, before we had spent hours manually drawing up seating plans. Stress levels were at their lowest and it didn’t interrupt an existing rhythm, it solved an impending chore.
   
   
2. It removed an enormous amount of friction. It didn't just match the old paper-based way, it was so much better. It pulled in pupil data, it was nice to look at, easy to change and share.
   
   
3. School leadership was clear: the old way was officially retired.

This is a vital lesson: parity will never be enough. If your new system does the same job as the old system with a slightly cleaner font, nobody will switch. You have to give people undeniable, tangible reasons to endure the temporary pain of learning something new. Miro failed because it demanded my headspace during peak exhaustion without immediate relief. In contrast, the seating tool succeeded because it arrived at a lull, eliminated a tedious manual task, and the bridge was burned to the old way.

Communication matters too

So why do so many rollouts flop? Often, it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of how humans digest information.

I’ve seen it called, The Ice Pop Rule of Corporate Communication.

Imagine an office of 100 people. You put up a laminated sign in the kitchen, send a message on the all-company Slack channel, and announce it during the monthly company meeting:

It’s clear. It’s generous. It’s written in black and white. Here is what will actually happen in the wild:

• 50 people will eat an ice pop.
• 20 people will swear blind they never heard about the ice pops.
• 10 people will assume they are strictly reserved for Mondays.
• 10 people will wonder if they need to log their ice pop in the HR holiday portal.
• 5 people will complain that the leadership is wasting company budget on frozen sugar instead of pay rises.
• 5 people will ask why there isn't a vegan, gluten-free, single-origin organic option.

Broadcasting an announcement does not equal adoption. 100% of your people will not know the tool exists, let alone how to use it, just because an email went out. Real change requires patient, persistent repetition: otherwise the work done to improve your digital tools will be forgotten and the old way will re-emerge. There needs to be a plan to bring it up in 1:1s, team retros, onboarding chats, and informal peer demos until it embeds into daily muscle memory.

Working collaboratively

Adoption isn't an afterthought checklist item on a risk log. It requires genuine collaboration between the agency, the product manager, and internal organisational leadership.

Here is how we tackle this together:

What an agency & product team must do: co-ownership

As an agency, there is a limit to what we can mandate from the outside. But we can build the right conditions for adoption from Day 1:

• Flag adoption as a risk early: We treat change management with the same engineering rigour as tech architecture.
  
  
• Involve future users during Discovery, Alpha, and Beta: If users only see the software when it’s finished, they feel like change is being done to them. When we invite them to show-and-tells and let them see their feedback directly alter the build, the narrative shifts. “Management bought another rubbish IT system” becomes “I helped shape this.” If the software isn’t perfect, their instinct isn't an annoyance, it’s “Ah, I wonder if we can tweak this bit.”

What leadership must do: pave the runway

In the spaces we design for, end users rarely get to choose their tools. Change is mandated from above, which means designing with and for users is only the start of the story. A brilliant tool risks never being used if leadership doesn't actively support the transition:

• Protect the timing: Never launch a new digital system in the middle of an office relocation, right after a restructuring announcement, during busy periods or during redundancy whispers. People only step out of their comfort zones when they are already comfortable themselves.
  
  
• Give people breathing room: Don't expect teams to maintain 100% standard operational output while simultaneously rewiring their working habits. Lower the workload temporarily during early adoption. Acknowledging that the transition will be slower at first gives people permission to learn without panic.
  
  
• Set a compassionate, firm sunset date: Consult widely, investigate points of genuine resistance, and remain flexible if unexpected friction pops up. But once the runway is set, retire the legacy way of working. As long as the old backdoor spreadsheet remains open, people will sneak through it.

Beyond the handover

Great software isn't measured by whether it passes automated build tests, passes QA or UAT. It’s measured by whether it makes a human being’s working day smoother, faster, and slightly less stressful. User research and co-design get you a product that works, but this is only the start of the story. Adoption requires leaders who are brave enough to clear the runway, absorb the temporary operational dip, and retire the comfortable past.

At Unboxed, our goal isn't just to cross the finish line, drop off a shiny new platform, and leave you asking: “Well, we built the thing… now why isn’t anyone using it?”

We believe in planning for adoption from the very start. Building systems that are shaped by real users, backed by empathetic leadership, and so comfortable that users will be glad to have it on their stressful days.