FAQs

• Transformation Tactics can indeed be applied to both change and transformation as well as learning and learning experience design. For LXDs, the cards can foster hands-on engagement and inspire innovative thinking, making learning experiences more interactive,  memorable and impactful. 

You can easily integrate Transformation Tactics with your existing change methodology. Whether you use Prosci's ADKAR framework, Kotter's Eight-Step Process for leading change, Kurt Lewin's Change Model, or a customized variation of any of these or other models, you will find that the tactics help you to think of new ideas to involve your audience and create the impact you're aiming for.

The tactics were created by Barry Kayton and Patrick Kayton, founders of Cognician. Their clients include Accenture, Coca-Cola, Exelon, Havas Media, Humana, Lloyds Banking Group, Mars, and many other Fortune 1000 companies. All Cognician's programs use the tactics to drive engagement and impact. 

Examples of specific outcomes of these programs are: 5% increase in productivity (measured in billable hours to clients); 25% improvement in employee security maturity; 32% rise in software adoption; 200% rise in workshop prep downloads; 1600% rise in manger feedback captured in Workday.

As you know, resistance to change is a significant challenge in organizations of every size. The tactics open many potential pathways to shift mindsets and behaviors. It's up to you to decide which tactics will work given the culture or sub-culture within your organization. Here's one example: Tactic 30, Restructure the Environment, recommends changing the environment in which people work in order to facilitate the desired behavior (or create barriers to the unwanted behavior). Such changes can have a disproportional effect on behavior, even among people who resist change.

Yes. You can find case studies at the author's business website: Cognician.

Yes, absolutely. The tactics are generic design principles. Whether your audience is leaders in a financial institution, or technicians in a factory, the tactics will inspire you to think of new ways to drive engagement. 

Yes, contact the authors through their business, Cognician. You can email tactics@cognician.com.

The tactics are intended to be used during the design phase of a transformation or change management project. They inspire ideas for how to activate the behaviors needed to achieve your transformation objectives. That being said, stakeholders can use the cards at any point to spark new ideas at any stage of a project.

The authors run workshops worldwide (both virtually and on site). They also offer digital learning experiences and certification in the transformation tactics methodology. For more information email tactics@cognician.com .

The publisher's price is €23,95 and discounts are available for bulk purchases. Email sales@bispublishers.com.

The cards help you to identify opportunities to drive specific, tangible, measurable behaviors, which are input metrics to your overall transformation objectives. For instance, one of the tactics is to pose meaningful choices to your audience. If the participants in your change intiative can make meaningul choices about the transformation, their choices give you metrics you can track.

The Transformation Tactics are a response to the universal phenomenon of change fatigue, for which there is no single solution. The tactics offer you many options to subtly or not-so-subtly encourage, nudge or incentivize the behaviors you're seeking, which will contribute to the achievement of your transformation goals. 

The cards are intended for use by change management, transformation and L&D practitioners, not by the participants of your change initiative. That being said, the cards are written in a style readily accessible by team members at any level.

Absolutely! The content is not limited to a corporate or commercial reader, and workshops using the Transformation Tactics have been successfully conducted at educational institutions and other non-corporate organizations.

The primary critical success for implementing any Transformation Tactics is clarity. Clearly identify your activation audience (the specific group of people in your organization at the heart of your transformation initiative). Clearly identify their activation problem/s. Clearly identify the activation  outcomes you're aiming to achieve. Clearly identify the activation behaviors that will achieve those outcomes. In other words: what do you want people to start, stop or keep doing, which will help to achieve those outcomes. And, finally, identify the metrics that matter. What metrics will shift if you activate the right behaviors and achieve your activation outcomes?

Please reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com if you'd like to participate in a community of practice. We'd love to hear from you. 

For complex changes involving multiple stakeholders it's even more critical to be deliberate about the transformation tactics you're using. Different audiences need to be involved in transformation in different ways. "One size fits all" is a recipe for a failed transformation initiative. With 48 different tactics to choose from you will find yourself matching up certain stakeholders with specific tactics. For example, the reflection tactics are extremely powerful for some stakeholders with the time and willingness to reflect. Other stakeholders may have neither the time nor the inclination to do any reflection whatsover, and may be better served by the tactics under one of the other seven catalysts. 

You will find many of these tactics described in various taxonomies of Behavior Change Techniques. But there are a couple of challenges with such taxonomies. First, they are sometimes industry-specific, which makes it difficult for practitioners to quickly grasp the principle and apply it to their own context. Second, the taxonomies are seldom user friendly in terms of their design and layout. They're many pages long with multiple columns. Some of the tactics come from our own experience in education and industry, where hundreds of thousands of people have used our learning and transformation programs.

The cards give you practical suggestions for how to help members of an organization become meaningfully involved in a transformation, with opportunities for contribution, connection, action, reflection and insight-sharing. Every card includes bullet-point guidance and a practical question that helps you apply the principle to your own transformation work.

You can use the cards to support a wide range of facillitation exercises. Let's assume you're working with a group of change practitioners and the goal is to use the cards to come up with ideas for driving their audiences to take action. If that's the case, here are some of the steps we would recommend:

1. Share an overview of your workshop's objectives.

2. Run an icebreaker that gets everyone thinking about change and action.

3. Discuss how each of the catalysts can influence people's behavior.

4. Create a clear problem statement, where the problem can be solved by driving the target audience to take action.

5. Introduce the Transformation Tactics Cards.

6. Work in groups and use the cards to brainstorm action-based solutions to the problem.

7. Get each group to share their solutions with all participants. 

8. Commit to next steps.

For more detail on each step, as well as ideas for how to run the workshop, we are setting up a dedicated page, which you can visit soon.

The tactics work at the level of global enterprises and at the level of SMBs, and can be combined with whatever methodologies and tools you're currently using. 

The transformation tactics cards can definitely be resused for different projects. At Cognician we've used  these tactics to drive transformational change with hundreds of clients and programs, thousands of deployments, and hundreds of thousands of employees.

At this time (May 2024) the cards are available in English only. Please reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com if you're interested in arranging a translated version.

The tactics are universal design principles which can be applied across any technology, from paper to pixels. At Cognician we've been using these tactics since 2010 to shape how we design our clients' transformation solutions. 

Yes, Cognician offers a Transformation Academy. Reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com.

Yes. Cognician offers an Activation Academy. Reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com to learn more.

Yes. Our team at Cognician would be happy to run a virtual (or in-person) workshop. Please reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com.

Yes. At Cognician we offer consultation with our C-Suite executives. Reach out to us at tactics@cognician.com.