---
title: Find at least one champion
pageKind: heuristic
status: published
abstract: Standards adoption stalls without an internal evangelist. Hand out the physical reference book in executive sessions and watch who engages — those become the champions.
sources:
  - articles/open-group-2017-managing-business-of-it
---

## The heuristic

> Any standard or framework adoption needs **at least one internal champion** — preferably more — who will evangelise the standard between meetings. Without that, adoption stalls regardless of how good the standard is.

## When it applies

Adopting `[[entities/it4it]]`, TOGAF, `[[entities/csdm]]`, or any operating-model framework inside an organisation that doesn&#39;t yet use it. Also: introducing a new architectural pattern, a new tooling category, or a new portfolio discipline.

## Why it works

Standards adoption is a multi-quarter slog. The consultant or vendor evangelising the framework leaves the building when the meeting ends; the champion stays inside the organisation and shapes the next thirty conversations that the framework needs to survive. No champion → no continuity → adoption decays back to baseline within a quarter.

The tactic for finding champions: hand out the physical reference book (e.g., the printed IT4IT standard) in executive sessions. Watch who picks it up, who reads it on the plane home, who emails you back the next week with concrete questions. Those people are the champions. They self-select; you just create the conditions.

## Counterexamples

- Top-down mandates with executive air cover. Champions still help, but adoption can survive without them.
- Tiny organisations where the entire IT leadership is in the room. The whole room can be the champion collective.
- Standards that ship with built-in tooling. The tool itself can carry the framing if the tool is good enough — though even then, a champion is the difference between "the tool is installed" and "the tool is used."

## See also

- Parent stance: `[[stances/contextualize-dont-transform]]`
- Related heuristic: `[[heuristics/pitch-simple-adjust-per-audience]]`
