Upgrading urban services and maintaining their functionality, such as drainage systems, in a sustainable manner to keep up with the increasing demand and changing needs, like climate adaptation and socio-economic conditions, is a planning, implementation and management challenge. Retrofitting urban infrastructure is a socio-technical process like planned or autonomous adaptation, where the motivation and ability of the stakeholders should be ascertained to avoid implementation bottlenecks. This paper aims at improving the understanding of institutional decision making for implementing retrofitting responses using the Motivation and Abilities (MOTA) framework. Motivation and abilities of the stakeholders to retrofit the urban drainage system in Ho Chi Minh City for maintaining the service levels in a changing climate urbanization were explored. The MOTA scores, based on stakeholder consultation and surveys, were obtained for retrofitting responses. The analysis of MOTA scores revealed that the motivation and ability of the stakeholders differed based on the adaptation objectives for planning and implementing drainage retrofitting responses. Hence it is recommended to use MOTA framework as a practical means to explore the inherent biases and internal processes of various actors to understand and communicate the need to integrate decision making in a sustainable manner.