Episode #3: The art of positioning your change to deliver buy-in, not resistance
Avoid the trust and adoption risks caused by overpromising or underselling your transformation
How Tech Programs Lose Trust: The Real Cost of Overpromising and Underselling Change
When large tech programs fail to land, the root cause is rarely the system. It’s the expectations leaders set early on — and how far reality drifts from the story people were told. In most organizations, that gap quietly erodes trust, slows adoption, and turns even well-executed implementations into reputation risks. In this episode, we unpack why strategic program positioning is one of the most important decisions a CIO or program lead can make.
Most tech programs unintentionally damage adoption by either overselling benefits or underselling the purpose. Overpromising creates disappointment when users experience turbulence at go-live; underselling makes the program invisible in a crowded internal environment. This article breaks down why expectations drive stakeholder behaviour, how to assess your true change impact, and how to set a narrative that protects adoption and ROI. You’ll learn a practical way to position your program with credibility — without noise, hype, or generic vendor messaging.
The Adoption Problem Nobody Talks About
Across major tech transformations, such as SAP S/4HANA programs, we see the same behavioural pattern: programs lose trust not because they lack technical depth, but because leaders misjudge how people evaluate change.
Users don’t see architecture, integrations, or data structures. They only feel what touches their day-to-day work.
If leaders oversell the “new world,” even normal go-live turbulence feels like failure. If they undersell the purpose, the initiative becomes another technical project fighting for attention among 40+ parallel priorities. In both cases, adoption drops — not out of resistance, but because expectations were never aligned with reality.
That makes positioning a business-critical decision. A poor story increases reputation risk, slows down behavioural readiness, fuels scepticism, and forces programs into reactive communication. While a good story protects credibility, gives air cover at go-live, and accelerates adoption where it matters.
Why Your Positioning Shapes Adoption
Behavioural science is clear: expectations directly shape how people interpret new experiences. In tech programs, this shows up in three predictable ways:
1. People evaluate change emotionally before they evaluate it rationally.
If they were promised a frictionless landing, any disruption feels like a breach of trust. That emotional response influences their willingness to engage, learn, and adapt.
2. People compare the “before” and “after,” not the architecture behind it.
You might run a €10M program with huge backend stabilisation. But if users only see a new login screen, the value narrative collapses. They can’t judge the technical complexity; they can only judge their own workflow.
3. People decide what to prioritise based on perceived impact.
If you communicate your program as “just an upgrade,” it gets filtered out. Every organisation has a limited cognitive bandwidth. Underwhelming stories starve programs of attention at exactly the moment they need it most.
These patterns make expectation management one of the most overlooked levers for CIOs — especially in SAP S/4HANA, ERP, and core system modernisation programs where the biggest impact is often below the line.
The Two Failure Patterns: Overpromising and Underselling
Overpromising
Many programs overpromise in two ways:
A) Overpromising smoothness
Under pressure, leaders describe the rollout as seamless or effortless.
But every large system change introduces short-term friction — broken reports, slow learning curves, temporary workarounds. When leaders claim “this will make life easier from day one,” reality can’t compete.
This damages trust, even when the long-term benefits are real.
B) Overpromising impact
Brownfield S/4HANA migration?
Master data overhauls?
Backend consolidations?
Huge technical value, BUT minimal visible change.
If you position those as transformative, the gap between promised and lived experience becomes impossible to bridge. People feel misled. Adoption slows. Credibility takes a hit.
Underselling
The opposite failure is just as dangerous: underselling.
Some IT leaders avoid big claims because they fear overpromising — so they default to technical language. But inside any mid-to-large organisation, employees skim corporate comms for roughly ten minutes per day across dozens of initiatives. Technical narratives disappear instantly.
People don’t resist because they dislike change.
They resist because they don’t understand why it matters.
Underselling kills attention before the program even starts.
Why Vendor Messaging Doesn’t Work
Most organisations unknowingly copy vendor messaging.
It sounds good in brochures, but it collapses internally because:
It ignores your culture
It doesn’t reflect your historical sensitivities
It exaggerates transformational aspects
It triggers scepticism when reality differs
Stakeholders can smell generic messaging instantly.
Your positioning must reflect your environment, your risks, and your lived experiences — not the language of a software provider.
Why Honest Expectation Management Builds Credibility
The episode illustrates a simple principle: people remember whether reality performed above or below expectations. Setting realistic timelines and being transparent about short-term friction actually strengthens your reputation — because over-delivering against expectations creates goodwill you cannot manufacture later.
In large tech programs, that credibility becomes a strategic asset. It shapes how the organisation responds to issues, delays, and the long implementation tail that follows hypercare.
Key Takeaways (What IT Leaders Should Remember)
Expectations drive adoption more than features.
Overpromising damages trust; underselling kills attention.
Visible change determines story size — not technical complexity.
Honest, early risk framing protects credibility at go-live.
Vendor messaging erodes trust; authentic narratives scale better.
About your host
Arne Kötting founded COSYN after years of seeing organisations struggle with the human side of tech change. He built the Change Playbook to codify what actually works based on 20 years of watching these patterns.
The Change Playbook is designed for IT program teams to confidently manage the human side of tech change in-house, without expensive consulting dependencies.
His conversational style cuts through complexity to reveal the fundamental principles that make tech change communication work - principles you can apply 1:1 to your own transformation challenges.
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