What it looks like inside the business
The pilot worked while the consultant was in the building. Six weeks later usage has fallen to one person, who is now the single point of failure for a process the business depends on. Something changed in a connected system, the workflow broke quietly, and the team went back to the old way without telling anyone. The training was a one-hour recording nobody finished.
Why it happens
Builds get funded; adoption gets assumed. The work of making a new way of working stick is unglamorous: skills assessment, documentation a new hire can follow, named ownership, routines for when things change. It rarely appears in a vendor proposal because it is not what vendors sell. It is, reliably, where the value either lands or leaks.
The end state
The team runs the workflow without outside help, and everyone can prove it. Runbooks exist and get used. Ownership is named, including what happens when the workflow changes. Leaders see adoption on a page: who is using it, where performance is improving, what to fix. When the person who knows it best resigns, the business continues without disruption.
How the work gets there
Activate, stage 04 of the Momentum Cycle, inside Momentum Build. Skills assessed, runbooks created, ownership defined, adoption measured. The engagement continues until the team can run the workflow and the result is measured. Transition to self-sufficiency is the default outcome of the Momentum Cycle. Ongoing support, if a client needs it afterward, is engaged separately as Manage, outside Momentum.