Consulting: Culture Transformation:: Change Management
Readiness Assessment Consulting

Involve Key Stakeholders via IQPM's Readiness Assessment

We advise that you assess change readiness through small group meetings, including the leadership team, with a Rath & Strong facilitator (or Rath & Strong trained facilitator) leading the process. Your leadership team will make its own assessment, and compare its results to those of other stakeholder groups. This type of process - that is, different stakeholders coming together to talk about the state of the organization vis-à-vis the change - helps build commitment to Lean Six Sigma. If you wish, you can get a broader perspective by using the readiness assessment as part of a targeted employee survey.

The Change Readiness Communication Imperative

Communications is a (perhaps the) major element of a successful Lean Six Sigma change plan: It's a thread that runs through the entire plan, touching everything else you do. If you don't do this right, you'll encounter serious problems.

However, in spite of its critical role, communications is something that organizations typically do not do well even during times of little change (are there such times any more?), much less during an all-consuming Lean Six Sigma rollout. We could guess at root causes: lack of appreciation for what's involved in good communication; inability to identify the real cost of poor communication quality; lack of an expert (and loud) voice on the implementation project team, and so on. Whatever the underlying reasons, we have seen numerous organizations make the same few - but potentially deadly - mistakes in communicating their Six Sigma initiative. Therefore, our change readiness assessment focuses leaders on organizational communications deficits and strengths as a key factor that is critical to Lean Six Sigma success.