Print PDF

Business tools are increasingly mobile, ready as needed on your smartphone or iPad. These tools track customer behavior, financial performance and the like.  

There’s also a mobile tool for managing change. The Change Readiness Audit (CRA) App available for iPhone, iPad or Droid is a way to collect and analyze data related to people issues and change.  Like many tools, the information gathered from the CRA can improve decision making and planning

The CRA helps evaluate the level of organizational readiness for a change. The tool requires the user to answer a series of questions. After answering all the questions, the user gets an analysis based on their answers.

The CRA’s questions are divided into five sections:  vision and business case, engagement, leadership, implementation effectiveness and sustainability. Each section has about five questions. Your results show red (need to address the area), yellow (have made progress but still have work to do) or green (doing well and on the right track).

Sometimes, the CRA identifies red flag areas that require more information. For example, if participants think resources are inadequate and leaders aren’t committed, these perceptions need to be investigated further. There may be competing initiatives. Leaders may be willing to commit but just haven’t been asked to actively demonstrate and communicate their commitment. The tool helps get potentially destructive perceptions and problems out in the open so that they can be addressed.

Once the results of the CRA are analyzed, other change management tools can be used to address problem areas and challenges. At this stage, a Change Management Work Plan should be developed. The work plan should reflect actions that address the relevant issues identified by the CRA. The Change Management Work Plan is a tool for listing change management activities, estimating effort required, assigning responsibility and tracking progress. If the audit uncovered that the people most affected by the change are not participating in the process, include them in some of the work plan activities.

The CRA is a great tool to revisit throughout a project. It can be used by the project team at different milestones to assess progress and course correct as needed. Most importantly, it spurs dialogue about people issues and strategies which ultimately will help your project succeed.

About Our Guest Contributor

Stacy Aaron is a Partner with Change Guides based in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Change Guides LLC is a national leader in change management reference publications, training programs, and consulting.

Stacy has been an organizational change consultant since the mid-90s when she worked for Deloitte Consulting Group. She has a marketing degree from Miami University and an MBA from The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.

She has taught Marketing at Miami University and Management and Organizational Behavior at Wilmington College.

Stacy is the co-author of two popular books on organization change – The Change Management Pocket Guide
published in 2005 and The Eight Constants of Change … What Leaders Need to Know to Drive Change and Win
published in 2008. These books are popular with many Fortune 500 companies such as Aetna, American Express, Bayer Corporation, Coke, FedEx, UPS, Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, NBC Universal, and Oracle. The pocket guide is in the top 1% of books sold on Amazon.

In addition, she and her partner, Kate Nelson, are syndicated writers for the Business Journals sold throughout the United States.

Website // Email // Twitter

Links To Additional Resources