Sponsors remove the small frictions that make adoption a chore, such as an extra approval, a missing form, or an awkward login, so following the new way is the easiest thing to do.
An example
Eight months after a regional bank spent two million dollars on a new credit-memo system, most commercial lenders were still writing memos in the old template and pasting them in at the end. The head of commercial lending operations sat with five lenders for a day each and counted the steps. The new system asked for a second sign-in, made lenders retype borrower data that already lived in the core banking system, and required a separate approval to attach financial statements. None of it was needed. She got single sign-on turned on, had the borrower data pulled automatically, and had the attachment approval dropped once the credit risk team agreed it duplicated an existing check. She sent no new memo about adoption. Within two months, ninety percent of new memos started in the system.
Why it works
This move works on how easy the new way is, and only on that. People often fall back on the old process because of friction: each extra step is a small cost paid every day, and the old way is the path of least effort. Removing those steps makes adoption the easier choice without any argument being made. It depends on finding the real frictions by watching the work, having the authority or allies to remove them, and a new way good enough to stand once the friction is gone.
The thinking behind it
Richard H. Thaler Nudge (2008), by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, argues that choice architecture, the way options are presented, always influences choice, and that small features of that design predictably shift behavior without forbidding options or changing incentives. A second sign-in or a redundant approval is such a feature. Removing them changed which path was easiest, and the lenders followed the easier path without anyone arguing for the new system.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010), Chip and Dan Heath include shaping the path among their advice: tweaking the environment so the desired behavior is easier. They frame change as a contest between the rational and the emotional mind, and a smoother path helps both. Removing a second sign-in and a needless approval is path-shaping in its plainest form, which is why adoption rose without a new memo.
When it fits
Typical setting: a change that has been decided but is not being adopted, where people are not openly opposed and keep slipping back to the old way. You need time to watch the work closely and enough pull with IT, compliance, or finance to change forms, systems, and approvals. It does nothing about opposition to the change itself.
How to use it well
Watch people try to do the new thing in their own setting, and count every step, wait, and workaround. Ask them what makes it slower than the old way.
Sort the frictions into those you can remove yourself, those that need someone else's sign-off, and those that serve a real purpose. Remove the first group at once. For the second, bring the owners the evidence and ask. Keep the third and explain why it stays. Retire outdated templates once the new path works, so the old way is no easier than it really is. Measure adoption afterward and keep looking for the next snag.
What it costs and where it backfires
It is slow, unglamorous work, and the credit tends to go to whoever announced the change. Some frictions exist for a reason, a control or an audit requirement, and removing them carelessly creates risk the company pays for later. Clear only friction that serves no purpose. Making the old way deliberately harder than it needs to be, or stripping out a control people depend on, crosses from clearing a path to forcing one.
When it is used on you
Ask, once the new way has become easy and the old way slightly harder, whether anything that protected you went with the friction, such as a review step or an audit trail. If it did, raise it with the owner of that control. If nothing was lost, the change has simply become easier to follow.