Organizational Readiness Assessment
Organizational Readiness Assessment
You might think I’m crazy telling an organization they shouldn’t do Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) work. I am a Diversity consultant after all. How could I not encourage them to do D&I work?
Well it’s true. I have…in situations where they weren’t ready to take on the work. When organizations aren’t ready, starting D&I work, even with the best of intentions, can actually do more harm than good.
How many of us are familiar with D&I work that has failed or that comes and goes without systemic effect. A client of mine used to refer to this as the “Diversity Wave.” He would say staff knew they could just stand at the shore disengaged as one D&I initiative after another would roll in and roll out again leaving the organization unchanged.
That persistent ineffectiveness erodes trust in any future organizational change work and thus leaves an unrelenting long-term impression the organization will have to break through in order to begin any successful D&I work. There are a few root causes of the ineffectiveness, one of them being a lack of organizational readiness.
That’s why we start with a readiness assessment. Using twelve measures of both capacity and commitment or skill and will we can determine the level of organizational readiness. Even more important, if readiness is low, we can pinpoint the areas that need to be strengthened before starting any D&I work.
Those measures range from overall leadership team effectiveness to an understanding of D&I stages of competence and a willingness to commit resources. Where does your organization stand? Take our readiness assessment to find out.
Instructions Below
114-95%
108-90%
102-85%
96-80%
84-70%
Tally up your total. How did you do? The above breakdown lists the percentage brackets.
Once you find where your organization lies, your next likely question will be, “What does that mean for our D&I work?”
That’s where working with this assessment becomes more of an art than a science.
Ideally, we’d love to see an organization scoring at least 95% on this assessment before they begin their strategic D&I work. Each of these measures is crucial to the success of organizational D&I work so none can be overlooked. Many times, however, 95% just isn’t realistic.
So we start with leveraging the strengths and filling the gaps that make the biggest difference. Because every organization is different, we can’t look at the numbers alone. We need to find out what’s the story behind the number. That helps us to better understand next steps.
Most importantly, when our organizations are not ready that doesn’t mean we give up the D&I work, it just means we have more preparation work to consider. If that’s the case for you, use this assessment to identify the areas that you need to focus on and make sure that when it comes to your organization’s D&I work, ready comes before aim and fire.