Adapt smarter with a change readiness assessment

Why do so many business transformations fail? Simple: businesses start building upwards without putting the right foundations in place. But change readiness needn’t be daunting; it’s about aligning everyone towards common goals. 

Some 70% of major business transformation projects end badly, but this failure is often totally avoidable with the right processes in place. And all those processes really take is an understanding of the bigger picture – like why ‘tech transformation’ is never just about tech adoption, and why employees may be resistant to change. 

Run a successful change readiness assessment and you’ll not only have answers to those questions, you  might also unlock insights that can streamline the business from top to bottom.  

But before we get there, we need to answer a big, obvious question… 

What is change readiness? 

Change happens all the time in business, but we’re talking here about conscious change. That usually means larger strategic initiatives instead of ad hoc adjustments – sweeping changes with ramifications that splinter out across every department. 

Think of an organisation like a spider web; if you pull the bottom left, the top right feels that tug. In that sense, nothing truly happens in isolation.  

Change readiness, then, is about understanding all the factors that can limit your organisation’s ability to deliver that change – and devising and implementing a plan that can mitigate potential issues before they arise.  

And, crucially, doing so before you start any real transformational change with the project at hand. 

How to run a change readiness assessment 

A change readiness assessment begins with a discussion about the proposed transformation, resulting in a set of key questions around buy-in, fit, and process. These questions are fired up and down the organisation – to stakeholders at every level. The answers will help you build a maturity model that you can use to determine if it’s time to push forwards, or time to take a step back and rethink. 

Here's a framework for your change readiness assessment...

As with most aspects related to business architecture, there's no black-and-white format for this; ‘readiness’ is a highly subjective term and the way you arrive at your change maturity model will need to be holistic and tailored to your business and desired outcomes. 

What is universal, though, is that all of this needs to be based around both business-wide and targeted communication. Successful change management connects the dots between members of senior management – who can often be a bit too ‘blue sky’ – and the people with boots on the ground – who can appear resistant to change given that they know exactly what the knock-on impacts will be. 

Really, that means eliminating surprises and guesswork, and making everyone an equal part of the solution.  

Why do business transformations fail? 

Transformations that don’t put time aside for change readiness assessment, and don’t have suitable change management processes in place, will find themselves running into issues for a few common reasons: 

Remember: culture is an organisational tool and needs to evolve along with your company. A change-resistant culture can be combated through clear communication at every step of the process.  

Transparent and upfront 

You never want to find yourself laying the track right in front of the train. By the time you start running into transitional issues, it can be too late to unpick the various threads that have landed you in trouble.  

While in most cases you’ll still be able to assess blockers and make amends, it becomes much harder when attitudes around a specific change have already started to cement into place. 

That’s why it’s so important to do the assessment work in advance of embarking on any major change initiatives.  

Usually, that means spending upfront to save in the long run – by fully assessing the change that you’re proposing, whether everyone understands the need for it, the implications of it, and whether the current organisational culture is even ready for it.  

In other words: you’ll want to have what you're proposing to do well documented and completely understood from the beginning. That's your starting point: setting clear expectations around timing and impact, laying out a clear vision for the enterprise and planning for meaningful investment across multiple years.