Insights · Measuring value
The Next Monday test.
The day a change happens tells you almost nothing. The room is warm, everyone is keen, the demo worked. The only measure that counts arrives a week later, when the enthusiasm has gone and the task is back: is the new thing still being used? That is the test.
Why does the day lie to you?
Because energy is not adoption. At the end of a good workshop everyone is enthusiastic, and the enthusiasm is real. It is fuel, not evidence. People are keen in the room and back to their old habits by Wednesday. The applause measures the event; it does not measure the change. Judge a pilot, a training day or an AI rollout by the mood at the close and you are measuring the one moment engineered to look good.
What does Next Monday reveal?
A week later, the conditions are honest. The novelty has worn off, nobody is watching, and the task that was going to be transformed is sitting in the inbox again, exactly as dull as it always was. In that ordinary moment the person makes the only decision that matters: reach for the new way, or fall back to the old one. Adoption does not live in the exceptional day. It lives in the unremarkable Monday. So that is where we look.
Why measure there, and not on the day?
Because it is the only honest, observable answer. It is our give-back test with a clock on it: not “would you fight to keep this?” but “did you actually keep it?”, and a week is long enough to tell the truth. It is also a number a board can trust: not how many attended, not how many things were built, but how much was still in use once it stopped being fun. Attendance is activity. Next Monday is adoption.
What should it change about how you run change?
Design backwards from it. Pick the work that comes round every week, so Monday brings the test to you. Build for the ordinary use, not the demo. And judge the thing a week later, in the cold light, not in the warm room. If your measure of success is the energy at the end of the session, change the measure.
How we work
We do not judge our work by the workshop. We judge it by Next Monday, and the Monday after that. Technology changes; the question does not. When the excitement has gone and the task returns, is your organisation quietly better than it was? That is the only success worth claiming, and it is the one we measure.