Change readiness and change readiness assessments are one of those areas that I find the change management industry has varied views and perhaps confusion about.

Organizations seem to understand it in different ways (or not understand it) and as a result, not gauge readiness for change effectively. That can create a difficult change management journey right through to a disastrous change management result.

So let’s clarify and demystify “change readiness” by explaining what it is, why you do it, when it is conducted and how it can be conducted.

The What, Why and When of change readiness

CMBoK lists change readiness as one of its knowledge areas. With the subtitle of “Preparing people for change”. It then breaks it into four sub areas:

· Building individual motivation to change

· Building organizational readiness to change

· Planning for resistance

· Measuring change effectiveness

This implies that change readiness happens from start to finish and is scalable from individual to organizational levels. It covers the overall broad use of the term and could well be used interchangeably with the term change management itself.

Whilst this is helpful, and this writer agrees with what is put forward, I think we need to explain it more specifically and clearly for practical application. The broad view leaves it fuzzy. Leaving things fuzzy has been a change management trait for too long.

The Change Roadmap applies change readiness in its framework lifecycle and explains two clear contexts and timings where change readiness is assessed:

Discover and Design Phase – This is understanding the change landscape and developing the change management solution. What is the level of stakeholder readiness to contemplate and undertake a change initiative of this nature, at this time? What is the appetite for it? What is their capacity for it?

Prepare Phase – This is preparing stakeholders for the coming change. How ready are stakeholders for go live (implementation). Have they received the preparation that is needed? Is everything in place for support? In this phase, change readiness might be measured on multiple occasions to track progress towards acceptable readiness.

Using these two contexts/timings, we see that in the Discover and Design Phase, a change readiness assessment is to understand the mindset and needs of stakeholders at the very start. It is a major input into defining an initial change management strategy and into a project’s business case or initial planning. In many cases, before a change initiative kicks off, there may be change management actions needed to create the appetite to even contemplate the project. The Discover and Design change readiness assessment draws out this need as well as critical initial actions required to start buy-in instead of creating resistance. This readiness assessment timing is the one sometimes ignored or not understood, resulting in being “behind the eight ball” as soon as the change initiative begins.

The Prepare Phase change readiness assessment, is what most practitioners understand and are used to. Typically done at least once when the project is nearing implementation (go live). However, it should be done throughout the whole phase of preparing people for the change.

Note the broad use of the term “change readiness” can sometimes cause confusion here. What we are clarifying is there is a change readiness context when starting a change initiative and another change readiness context when progressing a change initiative to adoption.

In the Prepare Phase, when the change initiative is in action, change readiness should be measured throughout to show progress towards the end goal of being ready for adoption (after that, adoption itself is measured). The Change Roadmap uses a sequence of: Unaware, Understand, Willing, Able to indicate stakeholder readiness progression.

Here is where the light bulb goes on with change readiness assessments in this phase. They are the change manager’s status report. When someone asks how is the change management component of the project going? The answer is in the change readiness assessment. It should be the one true indication for change management progress. Not how many change tasks have been done or their progress. That’s for a project management status report. Change readiness assessments tell you where you are in terms of having people ready to adopt. That’s your change management status.

Change readiness assessments become an important tool for tracking change management progress. The other factor is that whilst it can be assessed at an overall initiative/project level, it is also at a stakeholder level. Each and every stakeholder needs to be tracked for their readiness. You can’t go live for all, if all aren’t ready.

The How of conducting change readiness assessments

In my experience, organizations tend to use survey tools to send out the assessment questions or criteria if there are many stakeholders. The results can then be collated to form a view of change readiness. This could be both qualitative and quantitative data. The important thing is to get sufficient data and ask the relevant questions.

Sometimes stakeholders aren’t going to answer surveys. That’s where different methods such as meetings, interviews, focus groups, change agent feedback sessions, one on ones with key stakeholders and other communication mechanisms may be utilized. There may be other avenues of data gathering and feedback mechanisms that have been set up, that can provide the information.

Ultimately, however you gather the data, it must be distilled into meaningful indicators:

· For Discover and Design Phase, are people willing and able to undertake a change initiative? If not, why not, so you can work on that.

· In the Prepare Phase, are they willing and able to adopt the change if you “flick the switch”. If not, why not, so you can continue to work on that.

The Change Roadmap provides a function within its platform to help change managers conduct and utilize change readiness assessments. You can watch the short video tutorial to see how. Whatever method you use, it is a critical activity that needs to be understood and performed well.

Stephen Dantier – Founder, The Change Roadmap