Our change readiness journey

For Steve Barlow, the pathway to change readiness began in prison. Now, don’t jump to any hasty conclusions!

Steve worked in prisoner rehabilitation in a maximum security prison in Sydney – he delivered anger management and conflict resolution programs to inmates. It was during this time that he became interested in change readiness.

Why? Because attempts to change people don’t work very well if those people aren’t ready for change. You can spend a lot of money and not see much for it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to effect change. But you might need to build readiness first.

Steve went back to university, enrolled in a PhD program, and spent the next 6 years investigating what was going on in the minds of people who are ready for change. In the end, he had some answers. And an Outstanding Thesis Award for his efforts.

Equipped with valuable theoretical insights into the nature of individual change readiness (personal change fitness), the decision was made to develop a professional psychometric test to assess change fitness, measure it, and identify personal (and group) strengths and weaknesses. This test is called IRVEY®.

The test was a big step forward, but it wasn’t enough to solve the problems we were aiming for. There were still 2 big issues to address:

1. A strategy was needed to remedy weaknesses in change fitness and to develop it in people and teams.
2. The scope needed to extend beyond individual change fitness to include all aspects of organisational change readiness.

Addressing these 2 needs has been the focus of the last 8 years.

This has led to the development of training and coaching programs that build change fitness in individuals and teams. Building change fitness helps people handle change better and makes organisational change programs more effective. We have delivered these programs in 16 countries with people from a variety of educational levels and backgrounds. There has been an average 38% improvement in change fitness scores over a 90-day period.

We have also developed a series of formulas that describe, explain, and predict change readiness across an organisation. Using these formulas, we are able to build readiness for change organisation-wide. Doing so helps the organisation become more flexible, agile, secure, and competitive.