IMA Worldwide’s AIM Framework Addresses the AI Adoption Gap Behind Enterprise Failures

Durham, United States – July 17, 2026 / IMA Worldwide /

Durham, NC, United States, July 15, 2026

The statistic is two decades old: roughly 70% of organizational transformations fail, a figure long associated with McKinsey research. Everyone in change management can quote it. IMA Worldwide argues the number itself is no longer the story. The questions that matter are why the figure has not moved despite years of awareness, and what “failure” actually means. Both are what the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) was built to address.

What Transformation Failure Actually Is

Failure is not a missed deadline or an overspent budget. According to IMA Worldwide, failure is the moment installation is mistaken for implementation. Installation means the system is live, people are trained, and the project is closed. Implementation means people have genuinely changed how they work and the business case is realized. Most transformations are installed. Far fewer are implemented. The organization goes live, then quietly returns to old behavior, and the intended outcomes never arrive.

Why It Keeps Happening

The failure rate persists because organizations keep getting better at installation and no better at implementation. Each cycle brings better technology, tighter project management, and more communication, almost all of it aimed at the go-live. Very little is aimed at what happens after. Sustained sponsorship, reinforcement, and readiness are the factors that determine whether adoption holds, and they are the factors most often left unmanaged.

Ann Marvin, Chief of AI Tools at IMA Worldwide, frames it directly. “Everyone already knows the number. The reason it has not changed is that we keep solving the wrong half of the problem,” said Ann Marvin. “We optimize the launch and under-invest in adoption. Communication announces a change. It does not create one.”

What AIM Addresses

Don Harrison created the Accelerating Implementation Methodology in 1989, built on more than 40 years of implementation field research. AIM targets the implementation gap directly: the six non-delegable leadership tasks that sponsorship actually requires, the Express, Model, Reinforce sequence in which reinforcement carries roughly three times the weight of communication, and target readiness treated as data rather than resistance to be overcome. Without reinforcement, adoption typically fades within about 90 days of go-live. AIM is designed to hold new behavior in place past that point.

The same logic now applies to enterprise AI, where the gap is widening fastest. Organizations are deploying AI tools rapidly, but usage is not adoption, and installation is not implementation. The methodology that closes the gap for any large-scale change closes it for AI as well.

About IMA Worldwide

IMA Worldwide is an organizational change management firm offering structured methodologies and consulting services to help enterprises successfully implement complex initiatives. Its Accelerating Implementation Methodology, developed by Don Harrison, is grounded in more than 40 years of research into the human factors that determine whether organizational change succeeds or fails.