A Framework for Change That’s Stuck

MOVE

Picture a project or change manager who’s good at their job. They’ve engaged the sponsors, mapped the stakeholders, built a solid plan, and everyone says they’re onboard.

But the change isn’t moving. They’re using their trusted playbook and the change is stuck.

For change to flow, addressing “doing” (process) and “being” (how things are) is necessary. Most change tools and models focus on one element or the other. When a change stalls it needs process AND insight to get “unstuck”.

MOVE stands in the gap between “doing” and “being”, combining action with insight to get a stalled change in motion and keep it rolling.

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Two Things, Held Together

Most Approaches Pick a Side

A consulting process gives you steps to follow. A coaching approach helps you reflect and grow. Most tools are built to do one or the other well. MOVE does both, because both are happening at once whenever a change is underway.

The Change Itself

The actual work, moving through the world. The plan, the steps, the sequence of what happens next. The thing that’s moving from a current to a future state.

Tracked by four stages—Map, Open, Vet, Embed.

The People Carrying the Change

What they’re bringing to the work. What’s getting in their way. Reactions their brain and nervous system are driving before they’ve had a chance to notice.

Tracked by three lenses—Strengths, Systems, Science.

Neither one alone tells the whole story.

BEING: The Three Lenses For insight

What do you look through to see what’s stuck?

At every stage of MOVE, we look through three lenses for insight into where stuck might be coming from. Underutilized gifts, what the systems around people are trying to hold on to, and what brains and bodies are signaling outside of our awareness can stall change. And any one of them can be pointing to what’s needed to move forward.

Strengths

Core Question: What resource is already here, going unused?
Strengths, experience, skills, the gifts that people have that are so natural to them they don’t see them as unique. We start here and keep coming back here. This lens asks a different question: What awesomeness are people bringing to this change that is being overlooked? Because more goodness is what’s needed to get unstuck.

Systems

Core Question: What is the organization trying to preserve?
Systems aren’t just structures, they’re actors. Every system is doing something: getting its needs met, preserving its interests, sustaining itself. Exploring the invisible dynamics impacting a change can reveal new strategies for moving stuck change. This lens asks questions that explore what structures, norms, or external factors could be invisibly blocking the change.

Science of Change

Core Question: What’s happening in the brain and body of people affected by the change? Neuroscience has found that specific brain structures are impacted by change. Brain, body, and nervous system signals provide important information about what’s happening at biological level that could be interfering with change adoption. This lens asks questions about what’s happening inside people that may getting in the way of them being onboard.

Doing: Four stages For Action

Taking the change’s perspective

Map, Open, Vet, and Embed stages build on each other and they invite you to consider the change journey from the change’s perspective: What is happening to the change based on how people and systems are acting on the change? Applying the three lenses answers that question and they create insight that leads to action. Move through the stages sequentially, asking questions along the way. Use the answers to your questions to inform your action at the next stage.

Map what’s real to cut the noise.

Stalled changes typically have a story running about what’s wrong, who’s responsible and what should have happened by now. In Map, the story is set aside in favor of an accurate assessment of where the change is. Exploring resources that have been overlooked, structural barriers, and the feelings and behavior of people involved in making or adopting the change creates an accurate “we are here” picture that leads to the next right move to get unstuck.

Questions to ask:

  • Strengths: What skills, experience, and knowledge is available that has been overlooked?
  • System: What structures, governance, unspoken rules, or external barriers are stalling the change?
  • Science: What feelings, physical sensations, or behaviors are people experiencing?

Open one move to spark momentum.

The Law of Inertia is as applicable to change as it is to objects: a change at rest, stays at rest; a change in motion, stays in motion. For stalled change, the next right move—no matter how small—is all takes to spark momentum. Open asks “What is the smallest thing we can do right now?”, then looks for the answer in the resources, structural considerations, and capacity of people that was assessed in Map. With that move made, change begins to roll.

Questions to ask:

  • Strengths: What do you already know how to do that this moment needs?
  • Systems: What’s moveable here within the structures, governance, or unspoken rules?
  • Science: Where are you feeling pressure and what one action might take some of it off?

Vet the plan to keep it sound.

Once there’s momentum, it’s time to slow down to speed up. Pause and review the change plan before trusting it forward. Based on what you’ve learned in the previous stages, compare the current plan with what you’ve learned. Are resources being used well? Are there structural barriers about to trip up the plan? Do people have the capacity to sustain what’s being asked of them? Vet catches a plan that looks fine on paper but isn’t sound based on reality.

Questions to ask:

  • Strengths: How does the change plan make use of the skills, experiences, knowledge, and strengths of the people affected by the change? What adjustments need to be made?
  • Systems: What impact do organization structures, governance, external factors, or unspoken rules have on change plan activities? What adjustments need to be made?
  • Science: How aligned are the change plans with people’s energy, capacity, and the way brains respond to change? What adjustments need to be made?

Embed the gains to keep change moving.

Make adjustments to the plan based on what Vet surfaced, and keep the change flowing instead of letting it slide back to where it started. Embed is where insight becomes action.

Questions to ask:

  • Strengths: What does it look like to bring people’s full capability, not just effort, to this change?
  • Systems: Where can this change utilize organization structures, governance, external factors or unspoken rules to keep momentum going? What may need to changed to sustain the change?
  • Science: What impact is momentum having on people’s energy, capacity, and ownership of the change?

Doing and Being, Together

MOVE in Action: A Real World Example

The four stages are the doing. The three lenses are the being. Here’s what they look like when they work together.

A project manager, Wilma, is six weeks into rolling out a new system. The training’s been delivered. The comms have gone out. By every measure on the plan, this should be working.

It isn’t. Adoption numbers are flat, and nobody can say exactly why. Her boss is telling her she needs to send more communication and add additional training. She’s stuck, so she turns to MOVE.

Map: She stops defending the plan and looks at what’s actually happening instead of what should be happening. The training was solid. The comms did land. Adoption is slower than expected? Why? So what’s real, underneath that? She asks the three lens questions and at System—What structures, governance, unspoken rules, or external barriers are stalling the change?— she notices something she hadn’t before.

Lens—System: The org chart says one thing, but the actual decision-making runs through a different person entirely, someone the rollout never accounted for. The decision-maker has heard about the change, but is quietly blocking it because he’s worried that it will break things—and he’s a little hurt that he hasn’t been consulted.

Open: Wilma’s team has been urging her to revise the comms plan, but she realizes the next right step is one conversation, with the person who holds the influence, framed as “help me understand what’s not landing” instead of “here’s what you need to do.”

Vet: After having the conversation—it goes well—Wilma considers adding that conversation into a broader engagement plan. Before doing that, she checks against Systems again: does looping the person in formally protect the structure everyone’s already relying on, or does it quietly undercut it? After all, there may be something unseen that’s kept the decision-maker in the dark. She does a little digging and doesn’t find anything concerning. Overlooking the decision-maker was really just an oversight, so she moves forward.

Embed: The new engagement pattern gets written into the rollout’s governance, not just handled once and forgotten. Adoption rates reach target, and the sponsor sends special thanks to Wilma and team. And six weeks later, when a similar barrier risks stalling a different change, the structure is already there to catch it.

Same plan. Same tools. What changed was noticing which checkpoint Wilma was stuck at, and which lens explained why. Had Wilma listened to her team and revamped the comms plan, she would have done unnecessary work that didn’t solve the problem. Action + Insight = Change that MOVEs.

Ready to move?

Bring MOVE to Where You’re Stuck

If the plan is solid and the change still isn’t landing, MOVE is built for exactly that gap. Let’s talk about where you’re stuck and which lens might explain why.

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