Change Management

Your partner in public service transformation.

At PAG, we provide expert-led, tailored change management for the UK's most vital sectors. We help you navigate complexity, overcome inertia, and deliver sustainable change that improves outcomes for citizens and students alike.

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Why PAG for your change management journey?

In a crowded market, our change management approach is designed to deliver superior results. We combine deep expertise with a partnership model focussed on your long term successes.

Deep Sector Specialism

We focus exclusively on the UK's public sector and MATs. We speak your language and understand your unique contexts.

Human-Centric & Data-Driven

We balance a deep commitment to people and culture with rigorous, data-driven diagnostics and measurement.

Robust Hybrid Methodolgy

Our integrated change management model is more holistic and adaptable than single-framework approaches.

Building Lasting Capability

We don't just deliver a project; we partner with you to build your internal capacity for managing future change.

Explore our specialist change management areas

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Public Sector

We help public sector leaders navigate fiscal constraints, political complexity, and organisational inertia to deliver meaningful, sustainable change that improves outcomes for citizens.

The Digital Stagnation Cycle

A vicious cycle of constrained budgets, legacy IT, operational drag, and a persistent digital skills gap prevents modernisation and efficiency gains.
The UK government's digital deficit is stark, with almost half of central services undigitised. Legacy systems increase costs and lead to critical service outages. The most acute barrier is the lack of digital skills, with 58% of IT leaders citing it as their top challenge. This cycle is incredibly difficult to break without a holistic strategy.

Services exist in silos across departments, hindering collaboration, creating contested turf, and making coherent policy implementation exceptionally difficult.

This lack of 'joined-upness' is a persistent failing of UK government. It's not just organisational but also technological, with legacy systems that don't integrate, leading to duplicated effort and services unfit for purpose at a local level.

Structural Fragmentation

Policy & Political Volatility

Change is often driven by short-term political cycles rather than long-term strategic need, leading to constant churn and undermining planning.

A new government or minister may scrap a predecessor's flagship strategy. This environment demands agility while also trying to address long-term challenges like AI and climate change, which require consistent, cross-jurisdictional efforts.

Cultural Inertia & Risk Aversion

A deep-seated fear of failure means many would rather tolerate a known bad situation than attempt something new that might go wrong.

This is compounded by immense pressure to meet day-to-day targets, leaving little time, resource, or psychological safety to experiment or innovate. A lack of communication from senior leadership often leaves middle management feeling disconnected and resistant.

The Implementation Gap

A well-documented gap between the intention of a policy and its ultimate delivery, stemming from imprecise visions and underestimated effort.

Change is often perceived as being done 'to' people, not 'with' them. When the 'why' is not clearly communicated and people are not engaged, fear and resistance build, hindering progress and adoption.

Organisational Restructuring

While driven by efficiency, restructuring has a significant negative effect on the well-being and security of remaining employees if managed poorly.

The human impact is often severe and underestimated. Heightened job insecurity and being assigned unfamiliar tasks without adequate training lead to a loss of control and morale, underscoring the need for a people-first approach.

Our robust, hybrid change management methodology

We don't rely on a single, rigid framework. Our proprietary approach blends the strengths of leading change models (Lewin + Kotter + ADKAR) to create a holistic, adaptable, and effective toolkit for any transformation challenge. This multi-layered strategy ensures we address high-level phasing, leadership action, and individual adoption in concert.

Phase 1: Diagnose & Align

We start by preparing the organisation for change, building a solid foundation of understanding and alignment.

• Kotter 1-3: Create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a strategic vision.

• ADKAR Focus: Build awareness of the need for change and cultivate a desire to participate.

Phase 2: Deliver & Empower

This is the active implementation phase where we execute the plan and empower people to adopt new ways of working.

• Kotter 4-6: Enlist volunteers, enable action by removing barriers, generate short-term wins.

• ADKAR Focus: Provide the knowledge of how to change and develop the ability to perform new skills.

Phase 3: Embed & Sustain

We ensure the change sticks, delivers lasting value, and becomes the new standard operating procedure.

• Kotter 7-8: Sustain acceleration, institute change in the culture.

• ADKAR Focus: Deliver continuous reinforcement to make the change permanent and prevent regression.