ASSESS THE CHANGE ENVIRONMENT  (Part of the Plan Phase) The existing team environment and change culture needs to be considered when planning for change. You have an in-depth knowledge of your team, including the role and functions performed, their individual values and motivators, and the amount of change that they have experienced. How to analyse the existing change culture? Answering these questions will help you to analyse the existing culture in responding to change: How much change have the participants / leaders recently experienced? Have they experienced a similar change previously? What is their perception of the previous changes? Where can you expect resistance? What reward and recognition systems do we have in place to support this change? What level of change leadership do we have in the team? Are the leaders trained in change management and/or change leadership?) Is there cultural survey information available that may assist? Is the employee satisfaction survey data available for the participants involved in this project?

The change-culture of a team or organisation is developed over time based on previous history and experience of change. Take the time to identify and discuss the success stories of similar change initiatives that have happened across the organisation. This will help to you to effectively plan and position the change.  Questions that might assist include:

Getting a base line of how your team is responding to the change initiative allows you to measure the progress as you progress through your project. It allows you to focus on particular groups or issues within the teams as you conduct follow-up change readiness surveys. Change readiness surveys vary in approach and style. From a change leadership viewpoint, measuring where each of your team members are in the change cycle is a good marker of progress.

Sandar’s Change Readiness survey template provides sample questions and tools to plug in the results and graphically view the results.

Environmental scanning is one of the essential components of any business strategic plan; it is also a key activity in a change leader's skills, enabling him or her to consider how change(s) will impact his or her team, and what approach should be taken to lead a change. One model is PESTEL, which looks at the political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, environmental and legal factors that need to be dealt with in leading a change.

Regardless of how you consider the change environment, a solid understanding of your people and their past and current organisational environment will help you lead them through the change.

Spend some time doing research on similar changes within different organisations and industries.

Resources: 
   ● Change Readiness Survey Sample (515kB download)
   ● Meeting Record of Conversation Template (47kB download) 
   ● Organisational Politics, Culture, and Change Management White Paper (63kB download)