Prosci

Prosci
Name	Prosci
Type	Private
Founded	1994
Founder	Jeff Hiatt
Headquarters	Fort Collins, Colorado
Industry	Change management consulting and research
Services	Training, certification, research, tools

Prosci Prosci is a professional organization focused on change management research, training, and tools. It produces a widely used change management methodology, offers practitioner certification, and publishes benchmark research that informs practice across sectors. The organization interacts with management consultancies, technology vendors, academic institutions, and standards bodies to influence how organizations implement organizational transformations, mergers, technology adoptions, and cultural initiatives.

History

Prosci was founded in 1994 by Jeff Hiatt in Fort Collins, Colorado, during a period of growing interest in organizational development and information technology adoption. Early activity paralleled influential events and movements such as the rise of Total Quality Management, the diffusion of Enterprise Resource Planning systems like SAP SE and Oracle Corporation, and the expansion of ITIL frameworks in the 1990s. The firm’s growth coincided with publications and practitioners from John Kotter and Peter Drucker who shifted attention to leadership and change. Prosci developed its identity amid consultancy firms such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Accenture, and alongside academic departments at institutions like Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business that examined organizational change.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s Prosci expanded its research program, producing the annual Prosci Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report. Its trajectory intersected with global developments such as digital transformation initiatives at General Electric, post-merger integrations like DaimlerChrysler (historical example), and large-scale public-sector programs in countries including United Kingdom and Australia. Prosci’s founder and leadership engaged with practitioner networks including Society for Human Resource Management and Association for Talent Development.

Methodology and Tools

Prosci’s flagship methodology is oriented around a model commonly referred to in practitioner literature as the ADKAR model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement). The ADKAR construct is applied as a change-process and individual-focused diagnostic framework, used by implementation teams alongside project management practices from Project Management Institute and change frameworks popularized by John P. Kotter’s Eight Steps. Prosci provides toolkits such as change impact assessments, sponsor assessment templates, communication plans, and resistance management guides designed for deployment in contexts involving vendors like Microsoft technologies, Salesforce, and Workday.

Its tools are packaged for integration with enterprise platforms and program governance structures akin to those used by IBM and Capgemini. Prosci emphasizes practitioner-driven measurement approaches, recommending metrics for adoption, utilization, and sustainability comparable to performance measurement systems used by Balanced Scorecard advocates like Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. The methodology is often contrasted with other structured approaches such as Lean Six Sigma and ADKAR-adjacent frameworks used by corporations like Toyota and Siemens.

Certification and Training

Prosci operates a suite of training courses and certification programs targeting change practitioners, project managers, HR professionals, and executives. Courses range from foundational change management awareness to advanced practitioner and practitioner-analyst certification, delivered through in-person workshops, virtual instructor-led sessions, and partner-led programs with organizations such as Deloitte, KPMG, and regional training firms. Certification entails completion of coursework, application of methodology to a workplace project, and adherence to continuing professional development practices similar to credentialing systems at Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Prosci’s training curricula often reference research methods and case-based pedagogy found in business schools like INSEAD and London Business School. The company also collaborates with corporate learning platforms and learning management systems produced by vendors like Cornerstone OnDemand and SAP SuccessFactors to scale training delivery across multinational clients such as Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.

Industry Adoption and Criticism

Adoption of Prosci’s methodology spans industries including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and government agencies. Large adopters and consulting partners include Bank of America, NHS', Boeing, and global integrators such as Capgemini and CGI Inc.. The model’s emphasis on individual change outcomes has been praised by practitioners within Siemens Healthineers and Johnson & Johnson for improving adoption rates in IT rollouts.

Criticism from academics and some practitioners focuses on issues such as empirical validation, theoretical grounding, and adaptability. Scholars from institutions like MIT, University of Oxford, and London School of Economics have published analyses questioning the rigor of benchmarking approaches and the generalizability of practitioner-derived models. Critics aligned with proponents of evidence-based management such as Sumantra Ghoshal and Jeffrey Pfeffer argue for more randomized evaluation designs, while change scholars influenced by Karl Weick have debated the linearity implicit in staged models. Consultants from firms including McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company occasionally promote alternative frameworks emphasizing systems thinking and strategic alignment.

Case Studies and Impact

Prosci’s materials cite case studies across digital transformations, mergers and acquisitions, ERP implementations, and cultural change programs. Documented client cases include technology adoption projects at Siemens, mergers involving regional banks like HSBC subsidiaries, and public-sector modernization in municipalities comparable to those in Canada and New Zealand. Measured impacts reported in practitioner summaries include higher user adoption rates, reduced project delays, and increased return on investment for program sponsors such as chief information officers at AT&T and transformation leads at FedEx.

Independent evaluations from academic collaborations sometimes produce mixed results: some studies identify positive correlations between structured change management practices and project outcomes, while others emphasize contextual moderators such as leadership engagement, organizational slack, and institutional culture noted in comparative work involving McKinsey Global Institute and scholars from Columbia Business School. Prosci’s ongoing benchmarking and proprietary datasets continue to inform organizational practice, training curricula, and dialogue among practitioners at conferences hosted by Gartner, Forrester Research, and professional associations like Association of Change Management Professionals.

Category:Change management