Prosci is the most widely deployed change management framework in the world. It is rigorous, evidence-based, and broadly correct. It also imports assumptions that quietly fail inside Saudi family businesses, and the leaders running those transformations need to know which.
I am a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. I have used the ADKAR model, the change practitioner toolkit, and the broader Prosci methodology inside transformation programmes across the Kingdom. The framework earns its reputation. When change fails, it usually fails for reasons Prosci predicted.
It also fails, in family-business contexts specifically, for reasons Prosci does not predict, because Prosci is built on assumptions that hold reliably inside listed companies and governmental organisations and stop holding inside an enterprise where ownership, family relationships, and operating control overlap.
What Prosci gets right
The core ADKAR model is hard to argue with. Change in any organisation requires individuals to move sequentially through Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. Skip a stage and the change does not stick. This sequence holds in every enterprise context I have observed, including Saudi family businesses.
The Prosci toolkit gets several things right that most change practitioners get wrong.
It distinguishes between people change and organisational change. It treats sponsorship as the most important success variable, repeatedly and accurately. It is explicit about the cost of resistance and the predictability of resistance patterns. It builds in feedback loops where most internal change programmes have only one-way communication.
These are not trivial contributions. Most failed transformations in any market would have benefited from a stricter application of Prosci's basics.
Where Prosci's assumptions break down
The framework is built on three assumptions that are reasonable inside its origin context (large North American corporations) and unreliable inside Saudi family businesses.
Assumption 1: Sponsorship is held by a single, identifiable person
Prosci's most important variable, the executive sponsor, assumes that one person holds the formal authority and the willingness to back the change publicly. In a listed company, this is usually the CEO. The framework's tools for building and sustaining sponsorship are designed around that single person.
Inside a Saudi family business, sponsorship is rarely held by one person. The CEO holds the formal authority. The patriarch holds informal authority that often exceeds it. A senior family member who is not in an operational role may hold a third veto. A board chair from outside the family may hold a fourth.
Treating any one of these as "the sponsor" produces a transformation that the others quietly undermine. The change leader has to map the full sponsorship system, not the official one, and build engagement with each layer.
Assumption 2: The organisation can be analytically separated from its environment
Prosci's tools assume that a transformation programme can be scoped to "the organisation" as a discrete unit. Change practices, communication plans, training programmes, and reinforcement mechanisms are designed for that unit.
Inside a family business, the organisation cannot be analytically separated from the family system that surrounds it. A communication plan designed for employees will be parsed by family members alongside the operational team. A change in compensation philosophy that makes sense in the operating company may be read as a signal about ownership philosophy by the next generation. A leadership change inside the operating business may be processed as a family-system event by people outside the company who hold real influence over its future.
The change leader who designs as if the organisation is bounded will be surprised by reactions that come from outside the boundary. Inside Saudi family businesses, the boundary is porous by design.
Assumption 3: Resistance has a single source
Prosci's resistance management approach is built on the idea that resistance, while predictable, has identifiable sources that can be addressed through targeted interventions: communication, coaching, escalation.
Inside Saudi family businesses, resistance frequently has multiple simultaneous sources that are linked. The senior leader who is resisting the change may be doing so because their division would lose status, but also because their cousin has signalled discomfort with the direction privately, but also because their late father had been associated with the previous strategy. The interventions that would address one of these sources may inflame another.
Treating resistance as singular leads to interventions that produce backlash from sources the change leader did not realise existed. The work, in these contexts, is to map the full resistance system before designing the interventions.
What to add to Prosci in family-business contexts
Inside family-business transformations we run with SEC clients, three additions to the standard Prosci approach consistently change outcomes.
Map the full sponsorship system, not the org chart
Before any communication plan or training rollout, spend significant time mapping who actually holds influence over the change. Operational sponsors. Family sponsors. Informal sponsors. People with veto power they have never used. The family members who do not work in the business but whose voices carry weight. The map will be larger than the change leader expected. The mapping itself is part of the work.
Design interventions for the family system in parallel with the operational system
Every major communication, every milestone, every leadership move should be considered for how it will be received by the family system, not just the operational system. This often means a parallel set of conversations conducted by trusted family members or external facilitators, in addition to the standard Prosci interventions inside the operating company.
Run the resistance map deeper before responding
When resistance shows up, before deploying the standard Prosci response, sit with the question of whether what looks like single-source resistance is actually a composite. In family businesses, it usually is. The intervention that addresses the surface source while ignoring the underlying ones will produce worse outcomes than no intervention at all.
For more on the broader picture, see Leading Change in a Saudi Family Business.
The bottom line
Prosci is a strong framework. It is also a foreign framework, optimised for a different organisational context than the one many Kingdom enterprises actually operate in. The change leaders who do best with it inside Saudi family businesses are the ones who treat Prosci as a baseline rather than as a complete answer, and who add the family-system layer Prosci does not see.
The combination, applied seriously, produces transformations that hold. Without it, Prosci-trained change leaders often find their programmes succeeding on paper while quietly stalling underneath.
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FAQ
Is Prosci suitable for Saudi enterprises? Yes, with adjustments. Prosci's core ADKAR model and its emphasis on sponsorship hold reliably across Saudi enterprise contexts. The specific tools designed for resistance management and stakeholder mapping need to be supplemented when applied inside family businesses, where the operating company cannot be cleanly separated from the family system around it.
What is ADKAR? ADKAR is Prosci's individual change model, which describes the five sequential states a person moves through during change: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. It is widely used as a diagnostic and design tool in transformation programmes globally.
Should change leaders inside Saudi family businesses get Prosci certified? Many do, and it is valuable. The certification provides a common vocabulary and a strong baseline. The family-business context requires additional capability beyond Prosci, often developed through coaching certification or structured exposure to family-system frameworks.