FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Everything you'd ask in the first meeting.
Start with the problem you’re trying to solve, the questions you’d ask before you knew our name. The practical detail, platform, pricing, data, is all here too, further down.
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The questions behind the question
The things you’d actually ask before a first meeting. Find the one that sounds like your week, the practical detail on platform, pricing and data is further down.
Getting people to use it
How do I get employees to use the AI tools we've paid for?
Buying the licences is the easy 10%. A 2023 Gartner survey found that 79% of corporate strategists saw AI as critical to their success, while only 20% were using it in their daily work. That gap is not a tooling problem; it is a habit problem. People do not adopt a tool because it sits on their desktop, they adopt it when using it becomes the path of least resistance inside their real working week: prompted at the right moment, repeated often enough to stick, and made socially normal by the people around them. That is what a Company Challenges programme builds, not more access, but a designed rhythm of small daily actions that turns a tool you own into a behaviour people have.
We have an AI strategy, but almost no one is using AI day-to-day. What do we do?
You are in the most common gap in the market, and that is reassuring rather than alarming, because it is a known and solvable shape of problem. The strategy lives at the top of the organisation. The behaviour has to happen at the bottom, in thousands of small daily decisions, and nothing currently connects the two. Strategy documents, town halls, and training events all deliver information, and information does not change behaviour on its own. What closes the gap is repetition embedded where the work happens. The first step is to measure the precise distance between what your strategy assumes people are doing and what they actually do. That is what a behaviour gap scan does, and everything else, the structure, the format, the duration, follows from it.
How do I change my employees' habits?
Habits change through design, not exhortation. Telling people to work differently rarely works; engineering the conditions under which the new behaviour is easy, prompted, repeated, and rewarded, does. Every programme is built on a small number of behavioural principles drawn from primary research: make the action tiny and easy to start (Fogg), space the repetition out over time rather than cramming it (Ebbinghaus and Cepeda), attach the new behaviour to an existing moment in the day (Gollwitzer’s implementation intentions), end each touchpoint on a high note (Kahneman’s peak-end rule), and make participation socially visible so people see their peers doing it (Cialdini). None of this is willpower. It is the deliberate construction of a path that makes the new behaviour the easy one.
Training didn't move the needle. What's the alternative?
Training and habit formation are different things, and most organisations buy the first while needing the second. A training is an event: information delivered on a day, most of which is forgotten within a week. A habit forms through spaced repetition over weeks, anchored in the actual working day. The question worth asking is not “did people complete the training” but “are they working differently next month, without thinking about it?” If the answer needs to be yes, you do not need a better course. You need a rhythm: short daily or weekly actions, sustained over time, made visible and social, with live moments that pull energy back when it dips. That rhythm is the product.
Why do AI adoption programmes fail?
Because they treat adoption as a technology rollout when it is a human one. BCG’s analysis of AI value puts roughly 10% of the work in the algorithms, 20% in the technology and data, and 70% in people and process. Most programmes devote almost all their attention to the first 30% and assume the remaining 70% will sort itself out. It does not. Adoption is also an emotional problem before it is a skills problem: the real blockers are fear, status threat, and quiet taboo, the sense that admitting you do not know how to use the tool, or that the tool might expose or replace you, is not safe to say out loud. No amount of training touches that. Programmes succeed when they work the 70%, surface the resistance rather than route around it, and build the new behaviour through repetition and peer proof rather than mandate.
Resistance & culture
Why are people resisting AI, and how do I deal with it?
Resistance to AI is rarely about the technology. Underneath it sits something more human: a fear of looking incompetent, a worry about being made redundant, a sense that the work that gave someone their identity is being quietly devalued. Harvard Business School research maps several of these recurring barriers, from AI feeling like an unexplainable black box to the fear of losing control. The mistake is to answer an emotional objection with a technical reassurance, you cannot train your way out of a fear. You deal with resistance by making it safe to name. Company Challenges uses a Periodic Table of AI Taboos to diagnose which specific resistances are alive in your organisation, then designs the programme to address those directly, often through play, because play lowers the stakes of admitting you do not yet know something.
How do I make AI adoption a culture thing, not just a tools thing?
By moving the work from the IT department to the floor. Culture is not what leadership says in the all-hands; it is what people see their colleagues actually doing on a normal Tuesday. If using AI is invisible, it stays a tool thing. If it is made visible and social, a shared board filling up, a quiz everyone is talking about, a scratch card on the desk next to someone you respect, it becomes a cultural thing. The lever is social proof, and the carrier is physical and human presence, not another piece of software. This is why Company Challenges deliberately keeps the digital platform restrained and puts the weight on the offline and human layer, the part culture is actually made of.
Who drives adoption, leadership or peers?
Peers, more than leadership. Leaders set permission and direction, and that matters, but the day-to-day decision to try the new thing is driven by what the person at the next desk is doing. Our own research into play culture points the same way: the primary driver of whether a team plays, experiments, and adopts is peers, not the CEO. This is why champion networks and peer-to-peer learning consistently outperform top-down mandates, and it is the principle around which programmes are built. The programme makes peers visible to each other and gives them small, repeated reasons to act together, so adoption spreads sideways across the floor rather than being pushed down from above.
Cost, speed & proof
What's an affordable way to execute our strategy?
The expensive way is a large consulting engagement that produces a strategy and a slide deck, leaving you to handle execution. The cheaper and more reliable way is to skip straight to the behaviour. Execution is not an extra phase on top of strategy; it is the daily behaviour of your people, and you can build that directly. Company Challenges sits at tool-like pricing rather than transformation-programme pricing, a setup fee plus a per-person-per-month participation fee, so you are paying for an actual rhythm of behaviour change rather than for advice about it. For most organisations, it is the only complete habit system available at that price point, which is the whole reason it exists.
How long does it take to change a workplace habit?
Longer than a training day and shorter than people fear. Habits form through spaced repetition, so the variables that matter are not intensity but duration and rhythm. A focused programme typically runs for several weeks to a few months, with short, low-effort actions distributed across the working week rather than concentrated into a single heavy event. Spacing the repetition out is not a scheduling convenience; it is how memory and behaviour actually consolidate, which is why a twelve-week drip beats a two-day immersion almost every time.
How do I keep engagement up after the launch, when enthusiasm fades?
Assume the dip rather than be surprised by it. Every programme has a natural energy curve: a high at kick-off, a slump in the middle, and a risk of a quiet drop-off. The answer is to design for that curve in advance. Vary the format so it never becomes predictable; end each touchpoint on a high note so the last impression pulls people back; and place live moments, a contest, an expert session, a closing event, exactly where the energy would otherwise sag. Across our programmes, roughly 65% of participants remain actively engaged well past the halfway point, which is the number that matters if the goal is a formed habit rather than a completed course.
Does gamification actually work, or is it just a gimmick?
It works when it is built on behavioural science and fails when it is a layer of points bolted onto boredom. Badges for their own sake change nothing. What changes behaviour is the underlying mechanics: a tiny, easy first action, repetition spaced over time, social visibility, and a satisfying peak at the end. Play also does something specific in an AI context, it lowers the stakes of not yet knowing how to do something, which is exactly the fear that blocks adoption. So the useful question is not “gamification yes or no” but “is this built on real behavioural principles or is it decoration?” Company Challenges is deliberately the former, which is why the platform itself is kept simple and the design intelligence sits in the programme.
How do I drive AI adoption across a frontline or blue-collar workforce?
The same principles apply, but the assumptions about access do not, and this is where most digital-only approaches quietly fail. Field staff and frontline workers are not sitting at a desk waiting for a learning platform to load. This is precisely where physical and offline elements earn their place: a scratch card in a locker, a quiz at a shift handover, a printed artefact that carries an access code and keeps the programme visible where people actually are. Programmes have run with office, field, and blue-collar audiences across more than 40 countries, in up to four languages at once, because the method adapts to the audience rather than assuming everyone works the way head office does.
How do I know if AI adoption is happening?
By being honest about the difference between engagement and behaviour change, because they are not the same measurement. Platform tracking tells you who showed up and how often, which is useful and easy to report. It does not tell you whether the target behaviour has actually shifted in the real world. For that, you need a measurement layer designed around the specific behaviour you are trying to change, sitting alongside the programme rather than inside the platform. Company Challenges co-designs that layer with you per programme, so you can answer the only question that really matters: not “did people press complete” but “are they working differently now.”
Why the usual approaches fall short
Why aren't training and workshops enough to change how people work?
Because they are events, and behaviour change is a rhythm. A workshop or training day delivers a concentrated burst of information in a single day, and research on forgetting is unforgiving: without spaced repetition, most of what is learned is gone within a week (Ebbinghaus). Even the parts that are remembered rarely transfer, because the workshop takes place in a room, away from the real task, with no prompt at the moment of work and no reinforcement from colleagues afterwards. The energy in the room on the day is genuine, and it is also misleading, because enthusiasm is not the same as a formed habit. The fix is not a better workshop. It is to take the same content and distribute it as short, repeated actions inside the working week, anchored to real moments, made visible among peers, and sustained long enough to stick. A workshop can be a brilliant kick-off. It cannot be the whole programme.
Why aren't ADKAR and other change models enough on their own?
Models like ADKAR, Kotter, and Lewin are useful, and they are also not engines. They describe the stages a change passes through: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. In ADKAR’s case, this makes them good maps and good diagnostics. What they do not give you is the mechanism for actually producing the behaviour at the bottom of the organisation, day after day, across thousands of people. Reinforcement is the final letter in ADKAR, often treated as a box to tick once the rollout is done, when in fact it is the entire game. These models also tend to run top-down and manager-led, describing change at an organisational level, and they stay largely silent on the affective layer, the fear, status threat, and quiet taboo that actually stall adoption. So the model tells you that ability and reinforcement matter. Company Challenges is the part that builds them: the repeated, peer-facing, behaviourally designed rhythm that a change model assumes but does not supply.
Why don't people at the bottom follow a strategy mandate from the top?
Because a mandate is information, and behaviour is local. A strategy set at the top is abstract; it describes a direction. The decision at the bottom is concrete: whether to open this tool at this moment for this task while busy. Nobody translated the one into the other, and the gap between good intention and actual action is one of the most robust findings in behavioural science (Gollwitzer). On top of that, people take their cues from the colleague at the next desk far more than from a memo from leadership, so a mandate with no visible peer behaviour behind it produces compliance theatre at best and quiet resistance at worst. Where the mandate feels like control, it can even trigger a protective reaction that lowers the very motivation it was meant to create. This is exactly the 79/20 gap: the strategy exists, the behaviour does not, and the distance between them does not close by repeating the mandate more loudly. It closes by building the behaviour locally, through repetition, peer proof, and design.
The thinking behind the model
What's the science behind your approach, and why does it combine behavioural science and neuroscience?
Because the two answer different halves of the same question, and you need both. Behavioural science gives you the levers: make the first action tiny (Fogg), space the repetition over time (Cepeda), attach a new behaviour to an existing cue (Gollwitzer), end on a high (Kahneman), make it socially visible (Cialdini). Neuroscience explains why those levers work at all. Spacing beats cramming because of how memory consolidates between sessions. Reward and surprise drive learning because of prediction error in the brain’s dopamine system (Schultz). Fear shuts down adoption because a perceived threat to status or identity triggers a protective response that no amount of information can argue with, which is why psychological safety is a precondition for change rather than a nicety. Behavioural science is the engineering, and neuroscience is the physics underneath it. Build on only one, and you get tactics without a reason, or theory without a tool. We build on both, which is why the design choices in a programme are deliberate rather than decorative.
ONCE YOU'RE INTERESTED
The questions behind the question
How the platform, the experience, pricing, data and setup actually work.
Understanding the platform
WHAT IT IS
What is Company Challenges?
Company Challenges is a corporate habit-building system. It combines a digital platform, physical artefacts, and live moments to help organisations turn strategic intentions into daily behaviour. The platform is the engine; the programme around it, design, content, orchestration, and live sessions, is the product.
Who is it for?
Organisations that have strategies, values, or new skills they need people to actually adopt, not just acknowledge. Programmes have run with office workers, field staff, and blue-collar audiences across more than 40 countries. The method adapts; the platform scales.
How is this different from training or e-learning?
Training delivers information. Company Challenges delivers repetition. A training is an event; a Company Challenges programme is a rhythm of small daily actions embedded in the working week, sustained over weeks or months. The question it asks is not “did people complete the training?” but “are they working differently next month, without thinking about it?”
Is there science behind this?
Yes. Every design principle traces to primary research: B.J. Fogg on behaviour design, Ebbinghaus and Cepeda on distributed practice, Gollwitzer on implementation intentions, Kahneman on the peak-end rule, Cialdini on social proof. The reasoning is published in the Company Challenges Habit Design Framework (2026).
HOW IT WORKS
What does a programme look like?
A typical programme runs for several weeks or months. Participants receive short daily or weekly assignments via the platform, reflection tasks, conversation prompts, tool-use exercises, quizzes, creative challenges, grouped into themed sprints. Physical artefacts such as scratch cards can carry access codes and keep the programme visible at people’s desks. Live moments, kick-offs, contests, expert sessions, a closing event, create shared peaks and pull people back when energy drops.
What are the three layers?
Every programme draws from three layers: the digital platform (assignment delivery, tracking, access control), physical artefacts (objects that stay on desks and make participation socially visible), and live moments (sessions that create shared rhythm and peak experiences). Not every programme uses all three, the combination is a design choice made per programme.
How long does a programme run?
From a single day to several months. Duration is a design variable, not a default. A values programme for a large international team might run twelve weeks; a live event activation might run a single afternoon. Both can use the same platform.
What topics does it work for?
Any topic that requires people to change how they work. Programmes have covered AI adoption, corporate values, innovation capability, future of work, and team development, among others. The method does not change between topics; the content and framing do.
What does "65% sustained engagement" mean?
Approximately 65% of participants across our programmes are still actively engaging well beyond the halfway point. This is not a completion rate or a satisfaction score, it’s the share of people still showing up, which is what matters if the goal is habit formation, not programme completion.
The experience
FOR PARTICIPANTS
Do participants need to create an account?
Not by default. In the standard setup (collective mode), participants access the platform via a link, no login, no account. In individual mode, participants choose a username to track their own progress. In both cases, no personal data is stored on the platform.
What does a participant experience?
They receive short assignments, reflection prompts, conversation tasks, tool-use exercises, quizzes, creative challenges, grouped into themed sprints. The format varies deliberately across a programme to maintain engagement. Some assignments unlock over time or after completing earlier ones; others are immediately available.
What if someone falls behind?
There is no penalty mechanism. Participants can catch up at their own pace within the programme period. Live moments, contests, sessions, events, are designed to re-engage people who have gone quiet.
Is participation monitored?
The platform tracks activity in aggregate, not at the individual level. No one, not the programme manager, not the employer, can see whether a specific person has opened an assignment or pressed complete. Privacy is a design choice, not a workaround.
COLLABORATION & SHARING
Can participants see each other's work?
Not within the platform itself. Participant outputs, answers, photos, ideas, artefacts, are shared via the working channel the organisation already uses (Teams, Slack, Miro, or similar). This is deliberate: using the channel people are already in removes friction and keeps the programme embedded in the working day rather than next to it.
Does the platform have a discussion or comment function?
No. Discussion, feedback, and peer interaction happen in the external working channel. The platform links to it; it does not replace it.
How do shared outputs work in practice?
An assignment might ask participants to post a photo, write a reflection, or contribute an idea to a shared board. The assignment directs them to the relevant channel or tool. What accumulates there, a Miro board filling up, a Teams thread growing, becomes a visible sign of collective participation, which itself drives further engagement.
PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT
Who manages the programme?
Company Challenges manages the platform and programme delivery. This is a deliberate choice: running a programme well requires both platform knowledge and a deep understanding of how challenges are designed and adapted. There is no separate admin interface for client organisations.
What is the client's role during a programme?
Clients are involved in the design phase, defining the target behaviour, the audience, and the context. During the programme, the level of involvement varies by agreement: some clients run their own live sessions or contests; others delegate those entirely. The orchestration responsibility stays with Company Challenges throughout.
Can content be adjusted once a programme has started?
Yes, and for longer programmes this is a feature rather than an exception. Later sprints and assignments are often designed and built as the programme progresses, incorporating what’s learned from actual participant behaviour, keeping the programme responsive to where the organisation actually is, not where it was assumed to be at the start.
ANALYTICS & REPORTING
What does the platform measure?
The platform logs three types of events: opening the challenge, viewing an assignment, and marking an assignment complete. Each is recorded with a timestamp but without any link to an individual. The dashboard shows aggregate patterns: overall activity, completion rates per assignment, and engagement over time.
Can we see who completed what?
Not in the current setup, activity is tracked in aggregate. We’re building a more robust login option that will let organisations opt in to individual-level tracking, for use cases where personal progress data is genuinely useful. Ultimately, though, the goal is not to know who pressed complete; it’s to see whether behaviour is shifting.
What data can we export?
The current export is a CSV with aggregate behavioural data: views and completions per assignment, over time. When individual login is available, reporting at the personal level will follow.
What if we need deeper measurement?
For organisations that want to measure behaviour shift, not just platform engagement, we design a custom measurement layer for that programme. It sits outside the platform and is scoped per project.
Getting started
CONTENT & CUSTOMISATION
Is the content off-the-shelf or custom?
Both options exist. We offer a library of branded standard content as an entry point, a faster, lower-investment way to start. For most programmes, clients choose to adapt existing content to their organisation, or build something specific from scratch. The method is always the same; the degree of customisation is a design and budget choice.
Who creates the content?
Company Challenges writes and builds all assignments, in close collaboration with the client. Clients contribute context, source material, and subject-matter expertise; we contribute the design logic, what format to use, how to sequence, where to introduce variation, and how to anchor assignments in the working day.
What languages are supported?
Programmes can run in up to four languages simultaneously, the same structure, localised content. This has been done for Dutch, English, and others in parallel, including across five countries in a single programme.
What does the content development process look like?
The design process starts before any writing begins: defining the target behaviour, mapping the assignment set, and deciding on structure and format variety. For longer programmes, later sprints are often built as the programme runs, so content can respond to actual participant progress rather than assumptions made at the start.
PRICING
How is pricing structured?
Pricing has two components: a setup fee and a participation fee. The setup fee covers content design and platform configuration, and scales with the volume of assignments. The participation fee is per person per month, and scales with the number of participants and the programme duration, longer programmes have a lower per-month rate. Programmes running in multiple languages or difficulty levels carry an additional multiplier on the setup fee.
What drives the cost up or down?
The main variables are the number of participants, the programme duration, the number of assignments, and whether the programme runs in multiple languages or levels. A shorter programme for a small group in a single language is the most straightforward; a multi-country, multi-language programme with a large assignment set sits at the other end.
Is there a minimum programme size?
There is no formal minimum. In practice, very small groups (fewer than 20, 30 participants) rarely justify the setup investment unless the programme is a pilot with a view to scaling.
GETTING GOING
How do we start?
With a behaviour gap scan: a structured conversation to identify the gap between current and desired behaviour, and the audience it sits with. That framing determines everything, structure, duration, format mix, physical artefacts, and live moments. From there, we propose a programme design before any content is built.
How long does it take to launch a programme?
The platform can be live within a week when needed. Physical artefacts and organising live sessions typically require more lead time. A full programme with all three layers needs a few weeks minimum; larger or more complex programmes take longer. The content design is where time sits, not the platform configuration.
Can we see the platform before committing?
Yes. We can demonstrate the platform and walk through examples from previous programmes. For organisations that want to experience it as a participant before deciding, a demo run can be arranged.
What do you need from us to get started?
Primarily: clarity on the topic, the audience, and the desired outcome. Supporting material, existing training content, strategy documents, values frameworks, is useful but not required. Technical setup on the client side is minimal.
Practical considerations
TECHNICAL & INTEGRATIONS
What does a participant need to access the platform?
A browser and a link. No app, no installation, no account. The platform works on desktop and mobile. In the standard setup there’s nothing for IT to configure on the participant side.
Does the platform integrate with our systems?
No, and this is intentional. The platform links to the working channels an organisation already uses, Teams, Slack, intranet, Miro, without wiring into them. No API connection, no SSO, no data pipeline. This keeps every programme free of the integration complexity that delays or kills most corporate platform rollouts.
Does IT need to be involved?
Rarely. Because the platform requires no system integration, most programmes launch without any IT involvement. The main exception is if the organisation needs to whitelist the platform URL or if a specific authentication setup is required.
Can we add our own analytics on top?
Yes. Google Analytics can be added alongside the platform’s built-in tracking for more detailed behavioural data.
DATA, PRIVACY & SECURITY
What personal data does the platform collect?
In the standard setup (collective mode): none. Activity is logged against an anonymous session ID, with no link to a named individual. In individual mode, currently in development and opt-in per organisation, participants log in with a username (typically an email) and password. As the platform develops, individual mode will also support storing quiz answers as an unlock mechanism and running surveys. What’s captured always depends on how the programme is configured and what the organisation chooses to enable.
Is the platform GDPR compliant?
Data is stored on servers in Frankfurt, Germany, within the European Union, and does not leave the European Economic Area. For formal compliance documentation, including a Data Processing Agreement, contact Company Challenges directly.
RESULTS & FOLLOW-UP
How do we know if the programme worked?
Platform tracking shows who engaged and for how long. When individual login is enabled, it can also show participation at the personal level. That’s not the same as measuring behaviour change, for organisations that want to know whether the target behaviour is actually shifting, we design a custom measurement approach for that programme, separate from platform tracking.
What do we receive at the end?
A programme report covering engagement data, key moments, and observations from the orchestration team. For programmes with a custom measurement layer, findings on behaviour shift are included. The report is a design and programme document, not just a data export.
Can a programme be repeated or extended?
Yes. Several clients have run follow-up programmes after an initial one, scaling to wider audiences or deepening the same topic. Content built for one programme can be adapted and reused; it does not need to be rebuilt from scratch.
Can the content be used after the programme ends?
Yes. Content can stay accessible for as long as needed, the default is to keep it open for roughly the same duration as the programme ran. For fast-moving topics (AI tools, for instance), it’s worth discussing whether assignments need updating to reflect external developments before extending access.
Still have a question?
Book a Gap Scan and we’ll answer it in context, against the actual behaviour you’re trying to shift
