The decision and the case
The change is written down with what stops, what starts, who is affected, and the date. The reason rests on evidence, and the scope is fixed.
LA Global Institute Leadership decision tool · Published September 14, 2026
A change readiness assessment that scores whether one specific change is ready to launch.
Eighteen statements across six dimensions, scored in the browser with nothing saved or submitted. The reading tells a leadership team whether to set the launch date, plan further first, or stop and resolve one dimension. It is built for the meeting where the date is about to go on the calendar.
Six dimensions
Readiness belongs to one change on one date, not to the organization in general.
The same company can be ready to move a billing system and unready to merge two sales teams in the same quarter. Each dimension below is scored for the change you are deciding on now, and the lowest one sets the reading.
Sponsorship and leadership alignment
One named executive owns the change through day ninety, the leadership team tells the same story, and managers heard it from the sponsor.
Affected people and impact
Every role whose daily work changes is listed, with what it loses, gains, and must learn. The most exposed people were heard first.
Capacity and change load
Competing changes on the same teams are sequenced, managers have protected time, and abandoned past changes have been examined.
Skills, tools, and support
The technology is proven here rather than by a vendor, training matches day one and day ninety, and a named person handles questions.
Measurement and review
Adoption signals are observable, review dates are on the calendar, and a baseline of the current way of working exists.
The assessment
Mark each statement for the one change you are deciding on.
Eighteen statements across six dimensions. Settled means it is written down and the people involved would agree. Partly means work has started but a leader could not yet point to the artifact. Not yet means it has not been done. The score is not a grade on the organization; it is a reading of one change on one date.
How to run it
One leadership meeting, scored alone first and compared second.
The assessment is only as honest as the room. Scoring in a group produces the sponsor's answer. Scoring alone and then comparing surfaces the disagreement that would otherwise appear three weeks after launch.
Name one change
Write the change in one sentence before the meeting: what stops, what starts, for whom, and the target date. If the sentence cannot be written, the meeting is about the decision, not readiness.
Score alone first
Each leader marks the eighteen statements independently, without discussion. Print or photograph the reading. Disagreement between leaders is the first finding.
Compare the weakest dimension
Put every leader's weakest dimension on the table. When they differ, the leadership team is not aligned on the change itself, which is a dimension-two problem.
Assign the first move
Take the single lowest-scoring dimension and give it one owner and one date. Do not distribute the whole list; readiness work fails when it becomes eighteen parallel tasks.
Set the re-score date
Score again after the first move is done, or in thirty days, whichever comes first. The launch date goes on the calendar only when no dimension scores two or lower.
Three assessments that get confused
Readiness, impact, and organizational assessments answer different questions.
Teams often run one and believe they have run all three. The names sound alike, the templates circulating online blur them further, and the launch decision needs the first one.
Change readiness assessment
Answers whether this organization is prepared, willing, and able to make one specific change on a specific date. Scored before the launch date is set. This page.
Change impact assessment
Maps what the change will do to roles, processes, systems, and customers. It feeds the third dimension here, but it does not say whether leadership, capacity, or measurement are in place.
Organizational assessment
Describes the organization's culture, structure, and general capacity for change without reference to a particular initiative. Useful background; too broad to decide a launch date.
Source boundary
Built from the readiness literature and public guides, not from a proprietary model.
Weiner's theory of organizational readiness for change, published in Implementation Science in 2009, defines readiness as the shared resolve and shared confidence of the people who must implement a change, and links it to how much they value the change and how they judge task demands, resources, and situational factors. A 2020 systematic review in BMC Health Services Research by Miake-Lye and colleagues catalogued the readiness assessment instruments in use and found most were not validated, which is why this page states its thresholds as judgment rather than as a scale. The California Department of Technology's Organizational Change Management Readiness Guide, Prosci's change readiness material, and the Project Management Institute's change readiness paper supplied the practitioner framing of sponsorship, impact, and capacity. None of those authors or organizations created, reviewed, or endorsed this assessment.
Questions leadership asks
What the assessment can and cannot settle.
What is a change readiness assessment?
It is a structured reading of whether an organization is prepared, willing, and able to implement one specific change. The research literature treats readiness as shared resolve and shared confidence among the people who must carry the change out, not as a property of the organization in general. This page scores eighteen leadership statements across six dimensions and returns one of three readings. It is a planning aid, not a validated psychometric instrument or a certification.
When should the assessment be conducted?
Before the launch date is set and after the change can be written in one sentence. Scoring earlier produces guesses; scoring after the date is public turns every open item into a delay nobody wants to name. Score again after the first corrective move and whenever the sponsor, scope, or timing changes.
How do you conduct one with a leadership team?
Each leader scores the eighteen statements alone, the team compares the weakest dimensions, the lowest dimension gets one owner and one date, and the team re-scores after that move. The five-step sequence above is the meeting agenda. It takes one working session; the corrective work takes longer.
How is this different from a change impact assessment?
An impact assessment maps what the change does to people, processes, and systems. A readiness assessment asks whether the organization can carry that impact on the planned date, including sponsorship, capacity, skills, and measurement. Impact is one input to readiness. The comparison section above sets the three common assessments side by side.
What is a good change readiness score?
Any dimension at two or below out of six returns Not ready, whatever the total, because one stalled dimension stops a change on its own. A total of thirty or more out of thirty-six with no stalled dimension returns Ready to set a date. Everything between returns Conditionally ready. Those thresholds are LA Strategy Institute's judgment about when a launch date is defensible; they are not drawn from a validated scale, and a high score is not a guarantee.
Is there a change readiness assessment template or PDF?
The assessment runs on this page with no download, sign-up, or account. Use the print button to keep a copy of a completed reading. It is not offered as a reusable template because the statements are written for a leadership team deciding one change, and a generic form filled in by a project office measures something different.
Who should complete the assessment?
The executive sponsor and the leaders whose teams will carry the change, each independently. A single project lead completing it alone produces one person's view of leadership alignment, which is the dimension that most often fails. Frontline staff should be heard in the affected-people work, but this instrument is addressed to the people who can decide.