Whether you are adding departments, cutting costs, or introducing new technologies, it pays to check the ‘temperature’ of your organisation first. Do all those who could be affected are aware? Are they supportive of the idea? Is everything necessary to make it a reality?
Any major business decisions you make will face resistance if there is not enough engagement from the stakeholders. Employees and managers may ignore, subvert, or delay your idea.
Each company has to determine whether its processes, people and infrastructure is ready for change. This will help them establish a record of being successful in change management. A change readiness assessment is the best way to find out.
What does a Change Ready Assessment look like?
You can use a change readiness assessment to assess whether or not your organization is capable, ready and willing to implement and maintain significant changes. The assessment tells you the expected outcomes if your proposed changes are implemented today. It also helps to identify the issues that you must address in order to make this change process successful.
Most assessment tools are detailed questionnaires that gather information on stakeholder awareness and the organisation’s capability to implement change. One example is asking employees if the organization has made the right decision to implement the change.
They complete the assessment by circling on a scale that corresponds to their impression of each statement.
The Applied Change Readiness Assessment differs from others because it includes scientifically supported psychometric questions that ask the individual how they feel about change and their views on specific changes.
What purpose does a readiness assessment for change serve?
Three critical phases are required for change management. The first stage is where change leaders plan the strategy. The first phase is where change leaders plan the approach to take. They set objectives and secure support from key stakeholders. This second phase is about creating specific plans that will move people and organizations through this change.
This phase includes allocating resources, monitoring performance and adapting actions. The final stage is where change leaders make sure that the organization can achieve its target results.
A change readiness assessment ideally fits into the initial phase of this change management process although it’s also useful to check periodically along the way too. This assessment is used to ensure that the proposed change is likely to succeed before implementation. This map can be understood as an indicator of stakeholder engagement that informs your approach.
You can use it to determine where you are in order to create a strategy for moving forward. You can use it mid-change to make sure that your investment (and change management) actions are focused where you will see the most benefits.
Which factors can you use to determine readiness for change
To assess your organisation’s readiness for change, you must examine each of its four core elements: people, culture, process, and infrastructure.
People: People who are going to implement the plan need to understand the details and how they will be affected by it. The change readiness assessment will assess the level of their knowledge and buy-in. It also evaluates whether they know their roles and responsibilities and their belief that they possess the necessary skills to implement the change.
You should assess how they perceive the individuals leading the change. Employees who feel that the c-suite managers lack the ability to manage the change, or the middle managers don’t care about it will not be motivated to do the extra work required to make the initiative a success.
Culture: An organisation’s culture comprises the assumptions, expectations, and values that guide the actions of its staff. Understanding your organisation’s culture can help you predict how people will respond to planned business change.
Does the culture encourage collaboration or is it more individualistic? Does it seem bureaucratic or more entrepreneurial? Is the proposed change compatible with this culture or does it threaten it? If it challenges the culture, have sufficient efforts been made to sway the people’s (un)willingness to change?
Process:Also, it is important to evaluate whether or not the organization itself is prepared for change. Do you have all of the necessary policies, processes, and systems in place to facilitate the changes? Are clear metrics for the process in place?
Are process owners being assigned? Have functional hierarchies been de-emphasized and functional hierarchy’s de-emphasized. An excellent place to look for guidance is the organisations’ experience with previous change efforts. How successful were past changes? The staff understood the procedures? Did there exist enough documentation? Did the expected outcomes occur on time?
Infrastructure:It might be necessary to develop new policies and tools for companies that are adopting new technologies or diversifying into new product lines, as well as expanding in new areas.
In order to assess your readiness for change, you should ask the following questions: Has the organisation been well-planned to make sure that the business transitions smoothly? Is there a system for data management and information? This assessment will help determine if there are all necessary support systems before the rollout.
How do you assess readiness?
Many methods can be used by change leaders to determine readiness. These methods are easy to distill into simple steps.
1. For data collection, speak with key stakeholders:Interview everyone who is involved with the change initiative. This includes senior leaders, employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Use a change readiness survey that assesses the stakeholder’s understanding of the need for change, their perception of the benefits and barriers the change will bring, and their feelings about the organisation’s capacity to execute the change.
Is everyone well informed about the project’s sponsorship, the resources allocated, and the level of support they can expect? Get as many data points as possible on each of these four aspects.
2. Analyze the dataAnalyze the data after collecting it and identify areas where more support or focus is needed. The data can be visualized on a heatmap, which is colour-coded green for change facilitators and red to indicate risks. You can mark a red section if most stakeholders do not see the purpose of the change.
3. Create a plan to improve change readinessBased on your analysis of data, identify areas where you can improve the change readiness. Do you need to double down on your communication efforts to improve the stakeholder’s understanding of the change initiative? Is it necessary to spend more on processes and systems Every segment of your assessment is eligible for attention.
Be aware that even well-run initiatives can be undermined or derail by widely held negativities or neutral feelings. The budget size and scale are not enough to protect you from the worst.
4. For long-term or complex projects, repeat: If your change efforts are cutting across multiple divisions or are meant to last several years, you will need to have ongoing conversations about engagement and the company’s capabilities to sustain the change.
Because these steps are crucial to an engagement strategy, they’ve been integrated into our standard consultancy engagement model. We’ve also now distilled them into the change readiness assessment tool so you can either get a head start before engaging us or you can use the output and have your in-house teams take the required actions, periodically monitoring progress as they go.
What’s a readiness strategy?
A readiness strategy is a plan to align an organisation’s key elements (people, culture, process, and infrastructure) with the demands of a planned change initiative. Four key questions are addressed in a readiness assessment to help you create a solid readiness strategy.
• What should we keep doing?This is what you’ve learned and are now doing. Keep those communication channels open if you find that you are doing an outstanding job communicating the change you want.
• What do we need to start doing?The readiness survey may reveal things that were missed when planning for change. Stakeholders’ responses should help you make a checklist of things to do before you roll out the change.
• What do we need to watch?You might think that everyone involved understood the importance of change. But they may not be convinced. It might be necessary to maintain ongoing dialogues with stakeholders in order to get their buy-in.
• What do we need to leverage?If certain departments or individuals are more committed to the change than others you may be able to leverage their knowledge and skills to accelerate the change or increase the chances of it succeeding.
A good readiness assessment tool should also give you guidance on what to focus on, ideally including tips on how to do what’s recommended. It can help to guide the strategy as well as provide a framework for measuring the effects of actions taken. Continue to make the assessment.
Is it possible to accept change?
The change readiness assessment can tell you whether you’re ready to learn, resist, frustrate, or embrace change.
• You are ready for resistance if the change initiative is unclear and stakeholder engagement is weak. The change leaders, and most likely the organisation themselves, have not had success in major business transformations.
• You are ready for frustration if the organisation has a track record of successful change, but the upcoming change is being led by people who are either unwilling or unable to execute the change. The organisation has what it needs to execute the change, but senior leadership—and the staff’s perception of it—is the main obstacle.
• You are ready for learning if leaders have led successful change efforts in the past, but there are still gaps in planning, communicating, and implementing current change efforts. Leaders can use their past experience to accelerate the process of change and get the support of all stakeholders.
• You are ready for change if the organisation scores highly in all the change readiness metrics: communication is open and all stakeholders are aware of, excited about, and engaged with the change; the culture is agile enough to match the urgency of the change, and the organisation has thought ahead and adapted its processes and infrastructure to meet the demands of the change.
Final thoughts
Even when it’s apparent that change will be good for your company, some employees may disagree with this assessment. It is possible that the company does not possess the necessary infrastructure or processes to implement the changes.
The change readiness assessment identifies gaps in stakeholder engagement. It also reveals the organization’s capabilities and capabilities to successfully implement the change. It is the best tool an organisation with a serious interest in change should have.
The post What is a Change Readiness Assessment & How does it Work? Entrepreneurship Life first published this post.