About
Matt Humer
Guiding the people side of quality improvement, from pilot to practice.
I help the people side of improvement work keep up with the process side. Across a decade of quality improvement coaching, federal consulting, and change management inside a Fortune 150 company, I've kept seeing the same thing. The thread is the same: no matter how great a project or initiative might be, it needs the hearts, minds, and hands of those who need to change supporting the effort to deliver lasting success.
I live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and most of my work is with organizations in northern New England.
Why I built AdoptionLab.AI
Across more than a decade of helping organizations implement change, one pattern kept repeating. Smart, committed people were handed new tools and new ways of working, then left to figure out the rest on their own. The training was generic. The support faded after launch. The outcomes the work was supposed to deliver quietly slipped away.
I saw it first in healthcare quality improvement, where a sound process fix would fade within months because nobody had planned for the people side. GenAI is now making the same problem worse across every kind of organization. The pace of new tools, prompts, and warnings is faster than anyone can reasonably track. Leaders feel the pressure to act but don't have the staff, budget, or time to sort through the noise. Professionals want to develop their skills with these new tools but aren't sure where to start or what to prioritize. It's all just too much, too fast.
I started AdoptionLab.AI to give all of them a clear path forward.
The work hasn't changed: frame the problem, align the people, deliver the outcome, make it stick. The toolkit has. GenAI is a powerful new tool, but it's a tool, not the outcome. AdoptionLab.AI brings the fundamentals of change management and continuous improvement to whatever you're trying to make stick, whether that's a new process, a new AI tool, or both.
The pattern across all of it: I join complex efforts midstream, figure out what's actually going on, and translate it into a practical plan people can act on. That's the same work AdoptionLab.AI does now.
Where the method came from
2013
Speare Memorial Hospital, Plymouth, New Hampshire
A year inside a 25-bed critical access hospital straight out of graduate school. The teams were highly skilled and completely focused on patients, and they had almost no spare capacity. I watched changes that were poorly timed or poorly executed land on people already doing complex work and make that work harder for no good reason. It was my first lesson in something I have seen everywhere since: how and when a change arrives matters as much as what the change is.
2014 to 2016
Accenture Federal Services, Washington, DC
Management consulting for federal clients: stakeholder discovery, process mapping, gap analysis, and process redesign, plus leading a small project management team through a dashboard go-live. The discipline of writing down how work actually happens before trying to change it started here.
2016 to 2019
University of New Hampshire, Concord
Quality improvement coach and project facilitator for ten behavioral health organizations across New Hampshire under an Affordable Care Act grant. I designed a hands-on introduction to the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and delivered it eleven times across the state, reaching about 150 staff and leaders from more than a dozen agencies, with a recommendation rate above ninety percent. Along the way, six client grants, several development programs, and a national speaking slot came out of the coaching relationships.
2019 to 2025
Duke Energy, Charlotte, North Carolina
Six years of change management inside a Fortune 150 IT transformation organization serving more than 25,000 employees. I built the Change Activator Program from a prototype into a course with more than 200 graduates across sixteen cohorts, created a seven-session onboarding series for leaders, led adoption assessments for products that had stalled, and was recognized four times for exceptional contribution in adoption strategy, training design, and organizational learning.
2025 to today
AdoptionLab.AI
I started AdoptionLab.AI to bring the fundamentals of change management and continuous improvement to the people who need them most and can least afford a consulting engagement: quality teams in small healthcare organizations, and individuals trying to make new tools, including GenAI, actually stick in their work.
How I work
I join midstream.
Most of my career has been stepping into efforts already underway, figuring out what is actually going on, and turning it into a plan people can act on. Nothing I offer needs a clean slate to start.
I build capability that outlasts me.
The goal of every engagement is that your team can run the next one without me. Facilitator guides, worksheets, and coaching on your live project exist so the method stays when I leave.
I design for the people doing the work.
Training that fits around a shift, exceptions written down instead of invented, and reinforcement that happens in a huddle rather than an audit. The people side is only useful if it fits the day.
Credentials
LSSBB
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Process side
Prosci
Certified Change Practitioner
Prosci
People side
PMP
Project Management Professional
Project Management Institute
Delivery
CSPO
Certified Scrum Product Owner
Scrum Alliance
Delivery
AI Leader
AI Transformation Leader
Microsoft Certified
AI, on your terms
IDEO U
Designing for Change, Human-Centered Research with AI, Prototyping with AI
IDEO U
Design
Education MBA, University of New Hampshire · BA in History, University of Maine at Farmington
Memberships Association of Change Management Professionals, since 2019 · Project Management Institute, since 2018
Writing
Three short books, all written for leaders who would rather understand a change than be sold one.
A Leader's Introduction to Organizational Change Management
The field, its major models, and where to start
A short guide to what change management is and isn't, the leaders whose models shaped the field, and the practices a leader can start using this week. The book behind the people side of everything on this site.
Read on Amazon →A Leader's Roadmap to Human-Centered AI
5 Phases for Building Organizational Capability
The five-phase approach behind AdoptionLab.AI's engagements, Explore, Experiment, Extend, Embed, and re-Envision, written for leaders who need a path rather than a pitch.
Read on Amazon →From Author to Editor
Storytelling That Earns Trust in a World Where AI Can Fake the Rest
On keeping a human voice, and a reader's trust, when the drafting is no longer the hard part.
Read on Amazon →Working on something that needs to stick?
30 minutes, no slides, no obligation. Tell me what you are trying to change and who has to change with you.
Or copy the address: mhumer@adoptionlab.ai