During a change, adoption rarely fails because no one held a meeting. It fails because the project team, sponsors, people managers, and impacted groups operate from different versions of reality: delivery is “green,” managers are confused, resistance is surfacing locally, and unresolved issues sit outside the authority of the change lead. Periodic progress-and-issue meetings create a practical operating rhythm for bringing the technical side of the project and the people side of adoption together. Prosci describes project management and change management as complementary disciplines that jointly support project objectives and benefits realization [Prosci, 2025]. (prosci.com)

This action belongs in the change-management category of governance, planning, and operating model design. It gives the change manager a repeatable forum to test readiness, surface adoption barriers, clarify decisions, and assign follow-up. Used well, it turns stakeholder engagement from informal relationship management into an actively managed adoption system.

This action establishes a recurring meeting structure with defined participants, cadence, agenda, inputs, decision rights, escalation paths, and follow-up routines. It is not a general status meeting. Its purpose is to monitor whether impacted groups are becoming ready, willing, and able to adopt the change, while resolving issues that block progress.

Use it when a change affects multiple teams, requires behavior change, depends on managers or sponsors, has visible resistance, or includes high-risk milestones such as design sign-off, training, go-live, cutover, or sustainment. APM defines stakeholder engagement as the systematic identification, analysis, planning, and implementation of actions designed to influence stakeholders [APM]. (apm.org.uk) Prosci similarly emphasizes that stakeholder engagement planning helps identify impacted groups, understand influence, address concerns, and monitor engagement throughout the change [Prosci, 2025]. (prosci.com)

Before scheduling the meeting series, define the work it will do. Gather the change impact assessment, stakeholder map, adoption or readiness dashboard, project milestone plan, risk and issue log, communications and training plan, sponsor plan, and any feedback from managers, champions, help desk, surveys, or listening sessions. These inputs help the group discuss adoption evidence rather than opinions.

Invite only people who can contribute insight, remove barriers, or make decisions. A typical group includes the change manager, project manager, sponsor or sponsor delegate, workstream leads, communications or training lead, HR or business readiness partner, selected business representatives, and key people managers or change champions. PMI warns that too little stakeholder involvement can weaken implementation, while too much involvement can slow the project with excessive process [PMI, 2005]. (pmi.org)

Set a cadence that matches risk. During initiation and design, biweekly may be enough. During readiness, training, deployment, and the first weeks after go-live, weekly or twice weekly may be needed. CIPD’s evidence review cautions that meeting frequency can damage effectiveness and wellbeing if overused, so cadence should be intentional rather than automatic [CIPD, 2023]. (cipd.org)

A company is implementing a new procurement platform across five business units. The project plan is on schedule, but managers report that employees do not understand new approval limits and are worried that the system will slow urgent purchases. The change manager establishes a weekly adoption progress meeting for the project manager, training lead, procurement process owner, communications lead, business-unit change champions, and sponsor delegate.

In the first meeting, the group reviews readiness data and discovers that two business units have low training registration and high exception requests. The issue is logged as an adoption blocker, not just a training problem. The process owner agrees to simplify an approval matrix, the sponsor delegate agrees to ask business-unit leaders to reinforce attendance, and the change manager prepares a manager briefing. Within two weeks, attendance improves, questions decrease, and the issue is downgraded from high to medium risk.

The most common mistake is allowing the meeting to become a passive status readout. If no decisions are made, no issues are retired, and no adoption risks change, the meeting is not functioning as governance. A second mistake is inviting senior stakeholders but failing to give them decision-ready choices. PMI recommends having decision-making authority involved in issue resolution meetings to avoid delays [PMI, 2007]. (pmi.org)

Another mistake is treating resistance as attitude rather than data. Resistance may signal unclear impact, weak sponsorship, poor manager readiness, inadequate training, competing priorities, or a legitimate operational risk. Finally, avoid a fixed cadence that never changes. Increase frequency near go-live or during high resistance, and reduce it when adoption stabilizes.

A working meeting rhythm should show movement in both delivery and adoption indicators. Useful signs include fewer unresolved high-priority adoption issues, shorter issue aging, clearer decision turnaround times, improved training completion, increasing manager confidence, reduced repeated questions, higher readiness scores, stronger stakeholder sentiment, and evidence that impacted groups are using the new process or system as intended. CIPD notes that meeting effectiveness is partly reflected in whether attendees believe the meeting helps achieve individual and organizational goals and gives people useful information and voice [CIPD, 2023]. (cipd.org)