Implementation Management Associates (IMA Worldwide) has earned the Qualified Education Provider (QEP) designation from the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), accrediting three of its training programs to award professional development credits toward the Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP) credential. The approved programs—Introduction to AIM, ChangePro, and AIM Practitioner Certification—align with the ACMP Standard for Change Management, the profession's competency framework.
The QEP designation is granted to education providers whose programs meet ACMP's rigorous criteria. IMA Worldwide's approval reflects the methodology's research-based approach to behavioral adoption, executive sponsorship, and reinforcement strategy, which are core competencies under the ACMP Standard. According to McKinsey & Company research cited in the announcement, approximately 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. IMA Worldwide's Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) was developed to address these failure modes by embedding visible sponsorship accountability, structured resistance management, and the EMR (Express-Model-Reinforce) framework to drive measurable behavioral adoption.
"Having three programs approved for CCMP professional development credits under the ACMP QEP designation reflects the depth and rigor that practitioners expect from AIM-based training," said Ann Marvin, CEO of IMA Worldwide. "McKinsey's finding that 70% of transformations fail is a call to action for the industry. Our methodology is built to reverse that trend by providing practitioners with the behavioral tools and executive sponsorship frameworks necessary to drive measurable implementation success."
The three ACMP QEP-approved programs cover the full spectrum of change management practice. Introduction to AIM provides foundational grounding in the AIM framework, teaching change agents and leaders core principles of behavioral adoption, Target Readiness assessment, and structured implementation planning. ChangePro is an interactive workshop designed to build individual readiness and resilience during organizational disruption, shifting focus from managing projects to helping individuals self-manage personal and emotional impacts of change. AIM Practitioner Certification is IMA's advanced program, delivering comprehensive mastery of the AIM methodology; practitioners completing it demonstrate ability to lead full-cycle change implementations, build internal change capability, and apply diagnostic precision through the Target Readiness model to close adoption gaps before they erode ROI.
"For more than 40 years, IMA has refined AIM through field research across global enterprises in healthcare, technology, finance, and government," Marvin added. "ACMP QEP recognition validates what our clients have experienced firsthand—that behavior-focused change management, grounded in executive sponsorship and reinforcement science, consistently outperforms approaches that treat implementation as a project management exercise."
IMA Worldwide delivers AIM globally through certification programs, enterprise licensing, implementation advisory services, and organizational training. Change management practitioners pursuing the CCMP designation can apply credits earned through these QEP-approved programs toward their certification requirements. More information is available at https://imaworldwide.com.
