Transformation Readiness Check · 10 min · free
Where does your programme honestly stand?
Most programmes do not fail at the end. They were short of ready at the start. Ten minutes shows which parts of yours are ready and which are a number with a launch date.
Start the check now →No email before your result · no sales call after
- LaggingEveryone nodded at the offsite; afterwards several leaders do nothing and nobody expects to be held to a number.
- BasicLeaders accept their targets in the room and reopen them in private, and the painful decisions are deferred to next year.
- CompetentEach leader has signed up to their own target in writing, and at least one hard call (a closure, an exit, a role change) has been made rather than deferred.
- AdvancedLeaders presented their own targets to the board, the hard calls were made in the first months, and a leader who would not commit has left the top team.
- LeadingNo target has been quietly renegotiated, and leaders hold each other to their numbers without the CEO in the room.
What the check covers
Twenty to twenty-five practices across five dimensions, one screen each, and three more where they apply. Pick the sentence that is true today.
Case for change and ambition
Whether the business can say why it must change now, and whether the ideas add up to more than the target.
Leadership commitment and ownership
Who owns the programme at the top, and whether anyone expects to be held to a number.
Blueprint: workstreams, initiatives and sequencing
How the work is divided, how well each initiative is defined, and whether the dates are real or reverse-engineered.
Delivery infrastructure, value and governance
Who runs the programme, how progress is reviewed, and whether the benefits add up.
Capacity, capability and change fitness
Whether the people doing the work have been given the time, the skills and anyone to ask.
Ask your leadership team too. Set up a team poll: each colleague answers alone, and you see where your views differ.
Sample report · your profile
What you get
Your profile
Stage names across every area.
Two or three moves
Each one step right, with what good looks like.
A one-page PDF
Written to put in front of your board, leadership or team.
Each move in the report has a guide, with what to do and a worked example. Read the transformation move guides.
Four questions
How long does it take?
About ten minutes. One dimension per screen, and you can stop and come back.
Who sees my answers?
You. In a team poll with individual answers visible, the person who set it up also sees each answer against level and function, never a name. Only anonymised figures go into benchmarks. A comparison appears only once enough similar businesses have taken the check.
Is this advice?
No. It is a self-assessment against practices built from more than 30 years of strategy consulting and over 1,000 engagements. What you do with it is yours.
What happens after?
Your report opens on screen as soon as you finish, with no email asked for. If you want a copy, there is a field on the report to send yourself the link, once. Nobody calls. If you want to talk, there is a button on your report; nobody will contact you otherwise. No email before your result, no sales call after it, no list, and delete on request.
More about this check
Most programmes do not fail at the end. They were short of ready at the start. The target was real, the tracker was built. The things that actually decide the outcome were assumed. They include a case for change people believe, leaders who expect to be held to a number, and people freed from the day job. The shortfall is usually visible before launch, which is the only useful time to look at it. The cost of looking late is high: a programme with an annual benefit pipeline of $50m forgoes about $1m for every week its launch slips.
What the check covers
Sentences you can check:
Each of these is the lowest of five sentences on its question, from how the practice goes wrong to how it goes well. If one of them is true of your business, the check says so. Then it shows you the next sentence up: what one step better looks like.
What you get
Your profile across the five dimensions in stage names, not scores. The pattern you match, if you match one. The two or three moves that take you one step right, each with what good looks like. A one-page version written to be put in front of your board, your leadership or your team.
One business we have seen was a retail department store already through a management-led turnaround. Eighteen months of work across every function followed, run by forty of its own people. Each executive was accountable for their own plan and target. It produced more than sixty initiatives worth over $50m a year of cost and $30m of gross profit, together about 45 per cent of EBIT. That is one business we have seen, and it is not a forecast for yours.
The check measures the readiness machinery. It does not predict your benefits: those depend on the market, the balance sheet and the execution.
Start the check
One check, for a programme about to launch and for one already running. Four questions come first:
- whether you are answering for one business or a group
- roughly how big it is
- whether a programme is running today
- whether the business has run a major one in the last three years. If a programme is already running, three more practices are added about how it is actually going. Whether the benefits are landing, whether the gains are being locked in, and whether anyone is looking for the next tranche.
If you want the arithmetic of delay before you start, the cost of a week's delay is on the tools page. Nothing you type there leaves the page.
Ten minutes. Private. Your report on screen.
Two minutes first? Try the five-question version.
Before a cost programme starts, see how often such programmes hit their target.