Format: Online Subscription (one year, or five tests, whichever comes first)

Description: This 24-question instrument is intended to help you understand your strengths and weaknesses in leading complex change. The online product uses four points of measurement: Discerning, Discovering, Deciding, and Doing. Your score is provided on a radar graph. Numerical scores for each of the four metrics are also provided with interpretation from the author. You may print the results of each test. You can also review previous tests and compare your progress throughout the year. Alternatively, you can take the instrument once, then let four colleagues take the other four tests as part of the 12-month subscription, and then compare each others' scores.

Author's Welcome

Today, changes don’t come at us one at a time or during quiet periods when we have little else to manage. Instead, we are bombarded by multiple changes simultaneously, often stretching the limits of our resources and attention. As we try to respond to these overlapping, never-ending changes, the data suggest that we fail more often than we succeed; in fact, we only feel that we meet our change objectives about 30% of the time. Can we do better? Yes, but we need to take a radically different approach to leading continuous change. This short survey will help you identify your current beliefs and behaviors regarding leading complex change. When you compare your results to what you will learn as you read Leading Continuous Change you will be armed with important knowledge about aspects of your leadership you may wish to strengthen or adjust.

If you are a student of adult development, you may have studied David Kolb’s theory that asserts that adults learn and change when they have an actual experience, reflect on that experience, formulate a theory that explains what happened and how to improve, and finally engage in active experimentation to test their new knowledge. The best way for you to use this assessment is to reflect on your own actual experiences with complex change, take the survey, reflect on the results and then plan actions that you can take to improve. We can all get better at leading complex change; none of us can say that we have mastered it yet.

You’ll find instructions below on how to complete the instrument. Once you do, you’ll get a report that summarizes your results, assesses your strengths and weaknesses and recommends some steps you can take.

You may be the kind of person who feels there is little to be gained from taking this kind of assessment. You may be action-oriented and prefer “learning on the job” and figuring things out for yourself. That’s ok if your world allows you the time and grace to make mistakes. However, we should be wary of the stories that we tell ourselves: that things are going well, that everything is under control, that we’ve got it covered, that everyone loves us and thinks we’re doing a great job, and while we may not be perfect, we’re plenty good enough. The fact is that leading complex change is a tough job and we should accept whatever help we can get. Hopefully, if you take this assessment, you’ll learn important things that can help you be the most effective leader of complex change that you can be.

Since you can have up to four others take this assessment, it would be a good idea to have a few other people in your organization take it and compare results. You will find that some of your peers approach change differently. Discussing those differences and agreeing on how you want to do things going forward should prove a valuable exercise.

Congratulations on taking this next step on improving your success at leading complex, continuous change!

Bill Pasmore