ADKAR vs Kotter: Which Change Model Fits Your Company

Kotter's 8-step model is built for leaders who need to launch and steer a company-wide change. ADKAR is built for the individual employee who has to change how they work. If you must pick one, pick Kotter when the problem is organizational direction and ADKAR when the problem is adoption. In most $5–50M operating companies, the stronger answer is both: Kotter to frame the change at the top, ADKAR to find out why it is stalling on the floor.

This guide compares the two models side by side, shows where each one fails, and gives you a practical way to choose and combine them.

TL;DR

• Kotter is a leadership-driven, sequential process of eight steps. ADKAR is a five-outcome checklist applied to each person affected by the change.
• Use Kotter to build urgency, a coalition and a vision. Use ADKAR to diagnose why individuals or teams have not adopted the change.
• Research reviews agree that no single model is best in every setting. Context, culture and leadership capability decide the fit.
• Kotter can underweight employee input early on. ADKAR on its own lacks the strategic and structural view for a company-wide transformation.
• The two work well together, and either one fails without an execution plan that a floor manager can run on Monday.

Table of Contents

• The two models in plain terms
• ADKAR vs Kotter side by side
• Where each model falls short
• When to use Kotter
• When to use ADKAR
• Using ADKAR and Kotter together
• A decision guide for operations leaders
• Why models alone do not deliver results
• Our perspective
• Put the model to work with an Operations Audit
• FAQ
• Sources

The two models in plain terms

Kotter's 8 steps

John Kotter's model is a sequence a leadership team works through. The University of Waterloo groups it into four phases: set the stage, decide what to do, make it happen, and make it stick. The eight steps inside those phases, as summarized in Nursing Management, are:

1. Create urgency
2. Build a guiding coalition
3. Form a strategic vision
4. Enlist volunteers
5. Enable action by removing barriers
6. Generate short-term wins
7. Sustain acceleration
8. Institute the change

The model starts with the leadership team and moves outward. It answers the question: how do we get an organization moving in a new direction and keep it there?

ADKAR's five outcomes

ADKAR comes from Prosci, the change-management research firm that developed it. The model treats change as something that happens one person at a time. The University of Waterloo describes it as five stages: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. Each stage is an outcome a person has to reach before the next one can happen.

• Awareness: the person understands why the change is needed.
• Desire: the person wants to take part.
• Knowledge: the person knows what to do differently.
• Ability: the person can actually do it, at speed and at quality.
• Reinforcement: something keeps the new behavior from sliding back.

It answers a different question: why has this particular person, or this team, not changed yet?

ADKAR vs Kotter side by side

The popular shorthand is that Kotter does change to the organization, while ADKAR works with the people in the trenches. That is a useful simplification, but it hides the more practical point: they sit at different altitudes. Kotter tells you what leadership must do. ADKAR tells you what each employee needs in order to follow through.

Where each model falls short

Neither model is a complete operating plan, and knowing the gaps tells you what to add.

Kotter's gaps

A 2023 review of change management models notes that Kotter's top-down, sequential design may underemphasize employee-driven adaptation and reduce flexibility in fast-moving environments. A comparative literature review adds two specifics: employees get little input before the strategic vision is created, and skipping or mishandling a stage can delay or reverse progress, wasting time and effort.

In an operating business, the practical translation is this. If your leadership team writes the vision in a conference room and announces it, the people who run the dock, the service routes or the support queue hear it for the first time as an instruction. Step 4, enlisting volunteers, is where that gap shows up, and it is too late to fix by then.

ADKAR's gaps

The same 2023 review finds that ADKAR's limited strategic and structural perspective makes it insufficient for organization-wide transformation on its own. ADKAR assumes someone has already decided what the change is, why it matters to the business, and how it fits with budgets, org design and systems. It will not make those decisions for you.

It also becomes heavy if you apply it person by person across a 200-person workforce. The model is most useful when you group people by role and find the stage where each group is stuck.

When to use Kotter

Comparative research published through Springer finds that Kotter pays close attention to implementation by senior leaders and is more effective when change begins with senior management. That matches what we see in practice. Kotter fits when:

• The change is large and cross-functional: a new operating model, an acquisition integration, a shift in how you go to market.
• Leadership is not yet aligned, and you need a coalition before you need training.
• The organization lacks urgency. Teams are busy and comfortable, and nothing forces a change.
• You need visible early wins to build credibility with a skeptical middle layer.

Integration work is a good example. When two companies combine, leadership has to explain why the change is happening and what the new identity looks like, internally and externally. Even the outward-facing side, such as rebranding after an acquisition, follows the same arc Kotter describes: urgency, a coalition, a clear vision, and then consistent reinforcement until the new way is simply how the company works.

For a comparison of Kotter with a different model, see our guide on Kotter vs Lewin for managers.

When to use ADKAR

ADKAR fits when the decision has been made and the problem is adoption. Typical signs:

• A new system, process or SOP was rolled out, and usage is patchy.
• Training happened, but behavior did not change.
• One team adopted the change, and a similar team did not.
• Leaders keep re-announcing the change, and people keep nodding and carrying on as before.

The strength of ADKAR is that it forces a specific diagnosis. "Resistance" is vague. "This group has awareness and desire but lacks ability" is something a manager can fix with practice time and a coach.

The Awareness stage is also where many companies stumble. Employees often cannot see the risk the change addresses, or how their own habits create it. A good illustration comes from security: building a culture of security awareness depends on people understanding why a behavior matters before any rule or training will hold. The same logic applies to a new scheduling process or a quality checkpoint. No awareness, no desire, and everything after that is wasted effort.

The Nursing Management article makes a related point: when a change fails, the cause may be insufficient support rather than a bad idea, which is why attention to the people side is essential.

Using ADKAR and Kotter together

The most useful answer for an operating company is not a choice. A practical guide to change management from a software company describes the combination well: use ADKAR to diagnose individual-level adoption gaps, and use Kotter's framing to structure leadership and communication strategy. The two cover different layers of the same change.

Here is how that looks as a working sequence:

1. Kotter steps 1–3 (leadership): Build urgency tied to a number the business already cares about, such as margin, on-time delivery or cycle time. Form a coalition that includes at least one respected front-line or middle manager. Write a vision short enough for a supervisor to repeat.
2. ADKAR check (groups): Before launching, ask for each affected group where they sit today on Awareness and Desire. A short set of conversations is enough. This is the input Kotter's model tends to skip.
3. Kotter steps 4–6 (mobilize): Enlist volunteers, remove barriers, and plan quick wins. Use the ADKAR findings to decide which barriers to remove first: missing information, missing skills, or missing time.
4. ADKAR targeted actions (execution): For each group, match the intervention to the stuck stage. Communication for Awareness, manager conversations for Desire, training for Knowledge, practice and coaching for Ability.
5. Kotter steps 7–8 plus ADKAR Reinforcement (anchoring): Sustain the pace, then change the scorecards, meeting cadences and incentives so the new way becomes the default.

The last step is where most efforts leak. Reinforcement is the stage everyone agrees on and almost nobody staffs. If nothing in the weekly rhythm of the business rewards or inspects the new behavior, the old behavior returns.

A decision guide for operations leaders

The research does not crown a winner. The Springer comparison concludes that no single model can be declared most effective because models emphasize different things and fit different circumstances. The 2023 review reaches a similar conclusion: effectiveness depends on context, leadership capability, organizational culture and adaptation. So choose with questions, not allegiance.

If your teams are already stretched, read our piece on stopping change fatigue with a 60-day action plan before adding another initiative.

Why models alone do not deliver results

Both models describe what needs to happen. Neither one writes the Monday-morning plan. Most of the stalled changes we see in companies of $5–50M are not failures of theory. The vision is fine and the training happened, but nobody changed the scorecard, the meeting agenda or the way supervisors coach, so the work reverted.

That is the gap between a framework and an outcome. It shows up as the pattern we describe in why execution fails: the middle layer of managers is asked to translate strategy without the tools, time or authority to do it. Our note on the middle management gap goes deeper on that layer.

A few practical checks turn either model into something executable:

• Name an owner for every step. "Leadership" or "the team" is not an owner.
• Convert each stage into an observable behavior. Ability, for example, is a supervisor completing the new checklist unaided on three consecutive shifts.
• Tie reinforcement to an existing rhythm. Add the metric to the weekly operations review rather than creating a new meeting.
• Time-box it. A 60-day window with clear checkpoints keeps urgency alive without burning out the team. See how this works in our change adoption plan and our guide to putting change models to work in 60 days.
• Map the process first. If the current workflow is not documented as it really runs, you are changing something you cannot see. Our process mapping steps show how to do this quickly.

Our perspective

We rarely meet a company that picked the wrong change model. We meet companies that picked a model and stopped at the framework. The deck is excellent, the vision is clear, and six weeks later the floor looks the same.

Our view is that Kotter and ADKAR are both useful, and both are incomplete until they are converted into scorecards, meeting cadences and coaching routines that a floor manager can run. That is why we start with a diagnostic rather than a model. We map people, processes and performance systems against the goals leadership has stated, then write a prioritized plan the team can execute.

In practice we borrow from both. We use Kotter's discipline to get leaders aligned and moving, and ADKAR's discipline to find out which group is stuck and why. Then we stay long enough to transfer the systems so the team sustains the results after we leave. Having run warehouse operations, sales teams and a P&L myself, I can tell you that the change that lasts is the one a supervisor can explain and a scorecard can prove.

David

Put the model to work with an Operations Audit

If you are weighing ADKAR against Kotter because a change is stalling, the fastest next step is usually a diagnostic, not another framework. Our 90-Day Operations Audit is a fixed-price, structured diagnostic at $3,500. It maps your people, processes and performance systems against your stated goals and produces a prioritized action plan your team can execute, along with the scorecards, meeting cadences and accountability mechanisms that keep the changes in place.

If you want to talk through your situation first, we offer a paid discovery call at $500, bookable from our main site. For companies where the gap between strategy and results is the main issue, our page on the strategy execution gap explains how we work.

FAQ

Is ADKAR still relevant today?

Yes. Its core idea, that organizational change succeeds or fails one person at a time, still maps to what managers see after any rollout. It is especially useful for diagnosing why a change that leadership approved is not being used. Pair it with an organizational framework when the change spans departments.

What are the disadvantages of Kotter's 8-step model?

Research reviews point to its top-down, sequential design. Employees get little input before the vision is set, and mishandling or skipping a stage can delay or reverse progress. It can also feel rigid in fast-moving environments. Building in employee input early, before step 3 is final, addresses most of this.

Is ADKAR the same as Prosci?

Not exactly. ADKAR is the individual change model, and Prosci is the research and training firm that developed it. Prosci also offers a broader methodology that uses ADKAR as its people-side foundation. You can apply the five outcomes without adopting any vendor's full toolkit.

Can ADKAR and Kotter be used together?

Yes, and many practitioners prefer it. Kotter structures leadership actions and communication at the organizational level. ADKAR diagnoses where individuals or groups are stuck and guides targeted interventions. Use Kotter to launch and steer, and ADKAR to find and fix adoption gaps.

Which one is better for a mid-sized operating company?

It depends on the problem. If leaders are misaligned, start with Kotter. If the plan is clear but people are not following it, start with ADKAR. Most $5–50M companies need both, plus a short, time-boxed execution plan with named owners.

Sources

• Change Models, University of Waterloo Change Management
• Change is inevitable, Nursing Management (July 2020)
• A Review of Change Management Models (2023)
• Comparative Analysis of Change Management Models
• Comparison of Change Management Models: Similarities, Differences and Applications (Springer, 2019)
• CRM change management: A practical guide for leaders
• Building a Culture of Security Awareness
• Rebranding After Acquisition: A Seamless Transition

Recommended

• For Managers, Kotter vs Lewin: The Best Plan to Make Change Stick
• Make Change Stick: Midmarket Leaders Put Models to Work in 60 Days
• Midmarket Ops Managers: Stop Change Fatigue With a 60 Day Action Plan
• 60 Day Runway: An Operator Ready Change Adoption Plan