Change readiness is an essential early element of Foundations for Change. It is inseparably related to understanding the impact of change, building a business case for change, inspiring urgency and alignment, framing a plan for change, and general mobilization of the organization.
Change readiness is considered an important precondition of successful change. Some accounts have reported that failure to establish sufficient change readiness may account for half of all unsuccessful large-scale change efforts. Whether that magnitude of failure related to change readiness failure is substantiated or not, assessing change readiness and understanding the degree to which support and alignment for change are in place before beginning is only logical and wise.
Change readiness is not a singular, unified concept. In fact, there are key aspects that together help define readiness.
- Change readiness has two principal components. One is change commitment and the other is change efficacy.
Change commitment refers to members’ willingness to undertake the actions necessary to pursue change implementation. Commitment is informed by the perception of value and is considered the “psychological” side of readiness. Four companion judgments accompany this.
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- Is the change truly necessary?
- Is it important?
- What benefit will it provide?
- How worthwhile will all the disruption and invested effort be?
Change efficacy refers to members’ beliefs that they collectively possess the capability to execute the actions required to implement change and that certain conditions are in place to support the change. Change efficacy is the “structural” side of readiness.
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- Is there strong, committed leadership support for this?
- Is there a sponsorship network in place?
- Does the effort look to be adequately resourced?
- Is there a credible plan for change that inspires confidence?
- Is there an engagement strategy in place?
- Are clear, consistent messages being regularly communicated by appropriate sources?
Change readiness requires sufficiency of both commitment and efficacy.
- Readiness is also multi-level. Readiness can be considered at the individual, unit, department, or organization level. For purposes here, change readiness will be considered at the organizational level of analysis. However, the Word/Excel version of the assessment linked below may be modified to assess other levels.
Assessing change readiness should be an early diagnostic effort. It will help to identify where and to what degree support or lack thereof is present and will inform where efforts to strengthen readiness need to be focused.