“The process has actually decreased our work because we have spread it out. We have given everybody the knowledge, we have given them all the training so they do not get held up in their jobs waiting for me to give them the answer”

— Business Manager in a VA Eligibility unit

I have never seen a successful organizational- learning program rolled out from the top. Not a single one. Conversely, every change process that I have seen that was sustained and that spread has started small.

— Interview with Peter Senge, 1999

Traditional efforts often fail because they end prematurely with a report on the proposed solutions but no support or guidance for its implementation and maintenance in practice.

Deep Implementation in WCL is about follow-through. Members of the WCL team return to the local community to help embed the designed solutions into local practice.

Deep Implementation has four goals:

1. Introduce the newly designed solutions into the local work practice, with care to explain them and listen to feedback.
2. Determine with the local staff if these solutions are indeed useful. If they are not useful in the current form, the goal shifts to figuring out how the team might revise the solutions to render them effective.
3. Create new local practice step by step with the people in these functions and then gradually transfer stewardship to them.
4. Conduct an early, preliminary evaluation of the project and its solutions.