I like this framework by Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek. I’ve said before it fits great with our work; and more importantly, it’s about customer adoption. Adoption of new solutions is about overcoming the customer push of anxiety and inertia. The anxiety and inertia is what we see in the drawing: are the gains of the new solution bigger than the pains?

Sometimes new solutions can actually create additional pains that customers didn’t have before. That’s okay, and it’s another type of push in the adoption. However, you need to make sure the value your product or services creates overshadows the push of anxiety and inertia. One example might be adopting a new software solution. Additional pains might force users to work in an entirely new way, or to do an action they didn’t have to do before causing a negative experience. The value of the solution decreasing anxiety and increasing pull, needs to be bigger because you want to increase inertia.

You can’t avoid potentially new pains, you need to accept it. This framework helps you map out both paths: how gains will move customers toward the new solution, and how unexpected pains move them away from it.