Change Readiness Starter Kit

Turn a proposed change into a preparation plan

A tool can be ready while the people expected to use it still have unanswered questions. This starter kit helps a sponsor, workflow owner and team manager identify what must be prepared before a defined AI or digital change reaches everyday work. Use it for one initiative and one group first. The output is a short record of impacts, evidence, actions and decisions.

Invite people who perform the work as well as those who approve it. Ask them to describe a recent ordinary task and a difficult exception. Explain the proposed change in concrete terms, including what stays with a person. A readiness conversation should make uncertainty visible. It should not pressure participants to describe an initiative as ready.

Set the boundary before reviewing readiness

Record the workflow, intended users, sponsor, proposed first use and the decision this review will inform. State the starting and ending points of the work. Include exclusions: information the tool cannot receive, tasks outside the initial release and actions that still require approval. Confirm who can authorise access and who will support users after launch.

Use the readiness-and-impacts worksheet to consider purpose, role changes, approved information, access, capacity, learning, support and measurement. For each area, write the evidence available and its source. Mark the status as evidenced, needs preparation or unknown. These are discussion labels, not an automatic approval score. Record a specific next action and the person able to resolve it.

Understand the difference for each role

Separate the people affected by the change. A user may need to check a draft, a supervisor may need to resolve disagreement and a systems owner may need to maintain approved access. Give each group a row in the stakeholder-actions worksheet. Describe the new task, the decision they retain, the concern to investigate and the support they will need.

Ask about workload and access to learning. A willing team may still lack time to practise or cover for colleagues. Consider shift patterns, language, accessibility and different levels of confidence. Agree a practical route for a person to ask a question without exposing confidential information. Keep individual employment or health details outside this general planning record.

Plan practice and communication together

Explain why the workflow is changing, when each group is affected and which decisions remain open. Give managers a short account they can use in a team discussion. Avoid promising benefits before they have been measured. Identify who approves messages and who will answer questions that a manager cannot resolve.

Build practice around an approved example of the actual task. Ask the learner to complete the work, recognise an unsuitable input, check the output and use the fallback. Plan how they will receive feedback. Attendance can show participation; a demonstrated task helps establish whether the person can use the intended process. The organisation owns communication, learning delivery and the rollout decision.

Fictional worked example: internal request summaries

This example is entirely fictional and describes a planning exercise, not client performance. A shared-services team proposes an assistant that summarises approved synthetic requests. Sixteen coordinators would review every summary and confirm routing themselves. Two supervisors would handle ambiguity. The assistant would not send messages or assign requests.

The review identifies three preparation gaps: coordinators need a checking routine, supervisors need an escalation route and managers have not yet allocated practice time. The worksheet records these as actions rather than calling the team resistant. The baseline for review effort is unknown. The sponsor must decide whether the first group should wait until support and practice arrangements are agreed.

The paired fictional CSVs show the expected detail, including unresolved questions. Their role counts and proposed activities are illustrative only. Replace them with approved information about your own initiative; do not treat them as recommended targets or a standard rollout timetable.

Choose evidence that supports the next decision

Agree a small set of measures with the workflow owner. Define each measure, who is included, the period reviewed, the baseline source and the person responsible for collecting it. For example, task completion may use the number of correctly completed approved practice cases divided by all cases assigned in that exercise. State how missing or abandoned cases will be treated.

Pair participation with quality, checking effort, unresolved exceptions and a relevant business outcome. A login count cannot establish a saving. Keep estimated capacity separate from confirmed expenditure changes. Where the baseline is missing, make collecting it a preparation action rather than filling the cell with an optimistic estimate.

Use the prompts as a review aid

The five prompts help clarify the boundary, review impacts, prepare sponsor questions, design role-specific practice and check measures. Supply only information approved for your chosen AI tool. Keep source notes separate from instructions. Review every draft against the underlying evidence and the actual workflow. AI-generated suggestions do not confirm readiness or authorise a change.

Finish the meeting with a decision record: what is evidenced, what needs preparation, what remains unknown and when the relevant owner will review it. Confirm who leads the next action. A useful outcome may be a smaller first use, a revised process or a pause while a dependency is resolved.

Continue the work

The AI and Digital Change Working Pack adds six connected worksheets, a longer facilitation guide and twelve prompts for preparing and reviewing a rollout. Authentia's change-management advisory can help your sponsors and programme team apply the decisions to their own context.