In order to design an effective organizational risk and readiness assessment approach, it is imperative to understand and validate business strategies, context and drivers of the change. For this, the Organizational Change Lead, needs to engage with leadership to review the current and future organization state and structure and identify sponsors and key stakeholders of the change. They need to conduct initial rounds of interviews with sponsors and key stakeholders to understand their expectations from the change.

A preliminary impact assessment of change on stakeholders has to be conducted by the Organizational Change Lead to identify enablers, anticipated barriers, risks associated with the change and actions to mitigate them. They also need to review if any of the existing tools and communication channels and vehicles can be leveraged to develop and customize the final set of assessment tools. Based on these inputs, along with the number and locations of stakeholders impacted, an approach to conduct the assessment is determined.

The organizational risk and readiness assessment approach would typically include planning for:

• Target participants – Stakeholders who will be impacted by the change
• Assessment method – Techniques like past data collection, interviews, surveys, combination of techniques etc.
• Leadership involvement – Support required from the leadership to drive the assessment
• Assessment tool – The survey checklist or questionnaire that participants need to answer, interview or survey guides
• Communication strategy – Emails, meeting sessions, standardized tools etc.
• Other details – Assessment participants, timelines, schedules, logistics, geographies etc.
• Support resources - Resources needed to support change efforts (human resource, communications, training, admin support for scheduling, etc.).

This assessment will provide a complete, objective and quantitative feedback and a baseline to measure the success of change interventions. The quantity and quality of assessment results(data) is critical to design the further actions needed to handle the complexity of changes and overall transformation required to accomplish the vision.