If you think success is about building the perfect process or choosing the best tool… you’re already behind.
The real challenge? Getting people to use what you built.
Adoption is the silent killer of PMOs. You can design the most elegant framework in the world—but if no one engages with it, it fails. Period.
I learned this lesson the hard way. And today, I want to tell you the story of a PMO leader named Sofia—and how she almost lost her team… until she flipped her approach to adoption.
Chapter 1: The Launch That Flopped
Sofia had just been promoted to PMO Director at a global manufacturing company.
Smart. Strategic. Highly respected.
She rolled out a new portfolio management framework. Clean workflows. Real-time dashboards. Clear roles and responsibilities. Even the executive sponsor loved it.
But six weeks later? No one was using it.
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Project managers were still tracking in Excel.
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Teams complained it was “too much admin.”
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Status updates were stale, inconsistent, or missing altogether.
The same old chaos.
“We gave them a better system! Why aren’t they using it?”
She felt blindsided. But the truth was this: she solved the technical problem, not the human one.
Chapter 2: The Truth About Adoption (And Why Most PMOs Miss It)
Let’s start with the stats: Research by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals that 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, frequently due to factors like employee resistance.
Adoption isn’t about the tool. It’s about trust, timing, and relevance.
In other words:
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If your team doesn’t trust that the tool will help them?
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If they don’t see the value right away?
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If it adds friction instead of clarity?
They’ll ghost it.
Just like Sofia’s team did.
Chapter 3: The Moment Everything Changed
After a brutal portfolio review where half the data was outdated, Sofia did something bold:
She stopped blaming the team.
And she started listening.
She met with project managers one-on-one. She shadowed standups. Sat in on steering committees. She asked questions like:
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“What makes your work harder right now?”
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“How do you actually manage your projects?”
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“What’s one thing you wish this system helped you do?”
And what she found surprised her.
It wasn’t that they hated structure. They hated irrelevant structure. They didn’t hate updates. They hated duplicating work. They didn’t resist tools. They resisted tools that weren’t built with them in mind.
That’s when she got to work.
Chapter 4: The Adoption Playbook That Worked
Over the next 60 days, Sofia rebuilt her adoption strategy from the ground up.
Here’s the exact framework she used:
1. Co-design, don’t just deploy
Before finalizing anything, she brought in a pilot group of project managers. They shaped the dashboard design. Suggested automation rules. Picked the language used in status fields.
People support what they help create.
2. Show “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM)
Sofia crafted different messages for each stakeholder group:
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PMs saw how Smartsheet would reduce manual reporting.
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Execs got portfolio-level visibility.
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Team members got a clear view of their priorities.
She didn’t just sell features. She sold outcomes.
3. Automate early wins
The first thing she launched? A risk-alert system. When a milestone slipped, the tool notified the PM and the sponsor automatically.
This single automation showed how the tool could actually make life easier.
4. Build rituals, not reminders
Instead of nagging, she worked with teams to embed tool usage into routines:
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Weekly standups opened with a Smartsheet board.
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Monthly reviews pulled live dashboards.
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PMs got templates to run retros and track action items.
5. Celebrate adoption like a deliverable
Sofia publicly celebrated teams who adopted the new system. Not in a cheesy way—in a “this helped us ship faster” way.
She made adoption part of performance. And culture.
Chapter 5: The Payoff
By Q3, adoption had gone from 18% to 91%. Project delivery improved by 26%. Executives stopped asking, “Where are we with this?”
And Sofia? She became the leader known for getting things adopted, not just delivered.
How You Can Do the Same (Starting This Week)
Here are 5 things you can do right now to drive adoption:
✅ Talk to your users before your next rollout. Ask what slows them down.
✅ Run a pilot with a small group and iterate based on feedback.
✅ Create one automation that saves 10+ minutes a week for your PMs.
✅ Build your next team meeting around a live dashboard.
✅ Measure adoption, not just implementation. Are people using what you built?
