ACRES describes the five conditions people need to grow through change, rather than just endure it: Agency, Creativity, Relevance, Enablement and Safety.
Most change models describe what people should go through. ACRES looks at the ground they are standing on.
Explore the five conditionsTwo organisations can run the same change programme, with the same framework, the same communications plan and the same training, and get completely different results. The difference is rarely the plan. It is the environment the plan lands in.
When people have a say, room to experiment, a clear sense of why, the means to deliver and the safety to speak up, change tends to take root. When those conditions are missing, even well-designed change feels like pushing uphill, and resistance is often a signal about the ground rather than a problem with the people.
ACRES gives those conditions names, so they can be noticed, talked about and deliberately tended.
The five conditions work together and all at once. Each one makes the others easier to build, and a gap in one tends to drag the others down with it.
People have control and a say in how change happens to them.
Possibilities stay open, and people are encouraged to try things.
People can directly see and understand the meaning and purpose of the change.
People are given the best possible chance of delivering what needs to be done.
Change happens in an environment that feels psychologically safe and supportive.
ACRES is not a replacement for established change models such as ADKAR. It works at a different level, and each makes the other work better.
Sequential. One stage after another, focused on the individual moving through change.
Simultaneous. All five at once, focused on the environment people are changing in.
You need both. The steps describe the journey; the conditions decide how hard the journey is.
Change happens at several levels at once. ACRES sits in the middle, connecting what individuals go through with the overall health of the organisation.
Read the ground. Which conditions are strong, which are thin, and what does that mean for how fast and how far you can go?
Build the conditions into the plan itself: where people will have a say, what is genuinely open, and what support people will have to do the new thing well.
Treat resistance as information. Ask which condition is missing before asking who is resisting.
The framework is in active development. If you are working with it, testing it, or think something is missing, we would like to hear from you.
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