Free self-assessment
Can your organisation carry the next change?
24 questions across eight dimensions. At the end you see where your organisation holds, where it loses performance and at which two or three places a small change would move the most.
Companies rarely fail because they have too few people. They fail because the organisation did not grow at the same pace as the business.
With every size step, roles, leadership, communication, decision paths and culture change. What works with thirty people becomes a challenge with a hundred and fifty. Usually without a bang, as creeping friction: alignment that takes longer than the work. Decisions that get made twice. Good people who leave without anyone quite understanding why.
This check shows you where your organisation stands today and where growth is already creating friction.
Think of your organisation as it is. Not as it should be.
The most useful results come from answering out of everyday experience. Not by your guidelines, not by your employer brand, not by what leadership intends, but by what actually happens. If you are unsure, pick the answer closest to your reality. There are no right and wrong answers.
24 questions · 8 dimensions · about 8 to 10 minutes
Start the Organisation Readiness CheckYour answers stay in your browser. Nothing is transmitted.
Your organisation is captured.
Now we see where it holds and where performance is lost.
Your readiness score
– of 72
Scale-ready
Your organisation can carry the next change.
The foundation is in place and it reaches everyday work. That shifts your task: it is now about anchoring what exists so that it survives the next doubling. What works today because the right people carry it has to work tomorrow because the organisation carries it.
Resilient
Your organisation works today. At twice the size, possibly not.
A lot is there in outline. By your answers, some of it rests on individual people, on habit or on short paths, and those three are the first to disappear with size. The lever is to make what works reliable, even when the person carrying it today moves on.
Rebuild-ready
The friction is probably already costing you measurable time and people.
Your answers show friction in several places at once, and effects like that reinforce each other: unclear responsibilities create alignment work, which takes up leadership time, which is then missing for development and feedback. That sounds like a lot at once. Tackling everything simultaneously is rarely necessary though, because the order matters more than the pace.
Outgrown
Your organisation has grown faster than its structures.
Your answers point to structures that come from a smaller company. That is the most common state after fast growth, and it says nothing about the quality of the work: the organisation was extended where at some point it would need rebuilding. The way there starts with two or three decisions. It does not take a programme.
At your size a lot still runs on short paths and personal agreement. That is a real advantage, as long as you know which of those agreements you need to replace before you reach eighty.
Between 50 and 150 people most organisations break for the first time: what used to work by word of mouth now needs a form. Your weakest dimensions show where that is still outstanding.
Above 150 people, the management layer below the leadership team decides the culture. How consistently that layer works is the single most important factor from here on.
At your size, people mainly experience their own area rather than the company. Differences between teams are normal. The question is which of them you accept deliberately and which you do not.
In strong growth an organisation ages faster than it is rebuilt. Your weakest dimensions therefore usually show structures built for a smaller company that have not been brought up to date.
Steady operations are the cheapest moment for change: nothing is on fire, and the organisation has capacity for it. What pays off then is above all a look at the dimensions just below your best score. In steady operations nothing shows there; in the next growth or rebuild phase they show first.
In a rebuild, execution matters more than the design. Pay particular attention to leadership and communication in your result: people experience a restructuring through those two dimensions long before the new structure is in place. How a rebuild like that is accompanied
Two organisations bring two answers to each of these eight dimensions. Your result therefore only becomes revealing once you fill in the check separately for both sides and lay the differences side by side. What matters in an integration
Your strategy is in place. It does not yet land everywhere in everyday work.
In your answers your foundation is clearly stronger than what reaches your people. Direction, values and leadership intent exist, but apparently do not reach everyday work in the form they were meant to. This is the most common constellation in fast-grown companies, and it has a good side: you have to translate what already exists.
Your organisation lives off its people.
By your answers a lot works day to day: people feel seen, new joiners arrive, good people stay. The shared foundation underneath is less pronounced. Organisations like this run well for a long time. They become vulnerable when two or three key people leave at the same time. What rests on individuals today deserves a second support beside it.
Energy is lost between intent and everyday work.
Foundation and impact are both well developed here. The layer in between is not keeping up: communication, responsibilities, decision paths. That is the most expensive kind of friction, because it cannot be pinned on anyone. Nobody is doing anything wrong, and still every piece of alignment costs more than it should.
Your lever lies in depth.
Your eight dimensions sit close together. There is no single weak point blocking everything else. For prioritising that means going genuinely deep in two or three places rather than a little everywhere. An even profile is harder to leave than a lopsided one, because nothing hurts loudly enough to set the order.
Your profile across eight dimensions
Deliberately without percentages. Three questions per dimension do not carry a number to the decimal place; four stages say the same thing more honestly.
- Strong
- Stable
- Fragile
- Weak
- Direction & Priorities Foundation
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Culture & Values Foundation
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Leadership Foundation
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Communication Translation
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Collaboration & Decisions Translation
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Recognition & Appreciation Impact
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Recruiting & Talent Impact
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
- Employee Experience Impact
- Weak Fragile Stable Strong
What you can build on
Before we get to friction, a look at what already holds here. This dimension leads in your result.
Direction & Priorities
What usually sits behind it
Priorities that get named and also dropped again, and a leadership that says what is not on the list right now.
Culture & Values
What usually sits behind it
Values that visibly carry decisions, including uncomfortable ones.
Leadership
What usually sits behind it
Managers who address things early, and a shared standard for what leadership means here.
Communication
What usually sits behind it
Formats that create clarity rather than filling calendars, and a leadership that is faster than the grapevine.
Collaboration & Decisions
What usually sits behind it
Responsibilities and decision rights clear enough that nobody has to work around them.
Recognition & Appreciation
What usually sits behind it
Rituals that make contribution visible, regardless of who the manager happens to be.
Recruiting & Talent
What usually sits behind it
Hiring criteria that are written down and agreed on, and a selection process that actually checks them.
Employee Experience
What usually sits behind it
People who say early what is not working, and the experience that something happens as a result.
This is the fastest starting point a result can offer. What works in one place can be carried over to the weaker ones, and that is easier than building something new. What exactly it rests on here is best looked at together.
Where I would start
Every organisation has friction, good ones included. The question is the order in which you tackle it. These three would be first for me: by extent, and then by what has to hold first so that everything else can work at all.
01 — Direction & Priorities
Hard work goes into things that are not the most important right now.
What that can cost
- work that nobody needs in the end
- decisions that get made twice
- teams optimising against each other
- leadership time absorbed by course corrections
Where I would look first
Whether the direction has been understood, and understood well enough that a team can work out for itself what comes first. Where the direction sits, the question of priorities usually settles itself.
More on this01 — Culture & Values
Values that do not really steer behaviour cost credibility.
What that can cost
- growing scepticism about what leadership announces
- behaviour that is noticed and left unaddressed
- hires who fit on skills and not otherwise
- a culture that means something different in every team
Where I would look first
The last case in which someone clearly acted against your values, and what happened as a result.
More on this01 — Leadership
What is not addressed early gets expensive later.
What that can cost
- performance problems that grow over months
- conflicts that grow before anyone addresses them
- different standards depending on the manager
- resignations nobody saw coming
Where I would look first
Whether your managers know what is expected of them, and whether they all understand the same thing by it. Without a shared standard, everyone leads at their own discretion.
More on this01 — Communication
A lot gets communicated without clarity emerging.
What that can cost
- duplicated work because two teams do the same thing
- decisions based on outdated assumptions
- meetings that mainly close information gaps
- rumours that travel faster than leadership
Where I would look first
Your existing formats, measured by whether everyone knows their own task after a meeting or can work it out. And the information chain: at which point along it something gets lost.
More on this01 — Collaboration & Decisions
A lot of energy goes into the organisation instead of the work.
What that can cost
- tasks that sit between two areas
- alignment loops without a decision at the end
- processes that exist only out of habit
- tools nobody uses the way they were meant
Where I would look first
Responsibilities and decision paths, in that order. That is where most is lost: if nobody feels responsible and nobody wants to decide, nothing happens at all. Processes and tools come after that.
More on this01 — Recognition & Appreciation
Good work happens without arriving anywhere.
What that can cost
- a fading willingness to do more than necessary
- strong performers who go quiet
- recognition that depends on the manager rather than the contribution
- departures that only make sense in the exit interview
Where I would look first
How contribution becomes visible beyond the immediate team, and whether that rests on rituals or on individuals.
More on this01 — Recruiting & Talent
More time passes between offer and effectiveness than necessary.
What that can cost
- long onboarding without a clear target
- wrong hires that only surface after months
- leadership time in selection processes without structure
- rejected candidates who pass on their experience
Where I would look first
Whether there is a shared understanding of the criteria you hire against, and whether those criteria are actually checked in the selection process.
More on this01 — Employee Experience
Much that would help does not reach leadership.
What that can cost
- problems that only become visible once they are expensive
- surveys that raise expectations and disappoint them
- the quiet resignation long before the written one
- departures that could have been avoided
Where I would look first
What actually happened after your last survey, and whether the organisation heard about it.
More on thisThe most revealing part comes now
This check does not measure your organisation. It measures how you see your organisation. That is the actual starting point.
Pass the check to two of your managers and compare the answers. Where you are two stages apart, the more interesting finding almost always sits there rather than in your own result.
Pass the check to your leadership team and to a colleague at your level. The gap between the levels says more about your organisation than any single score.
Ask two members of the leadership team to fill in the same check. That gives you something no employee survey delivers: the leadership blind spot, named and comparable.
Pass the check to two people who look at the same organisation from a different perspective. The differences are the actual finding.
There is no perfect organisation, and 72 out of 72 points is not a goal. The purpose is a different one: to find the two or three places where a comparatively small change moves disproportionately much.
If you would like to talk about it
A result is not yet a decision. If you want to know what follows from it, describe your situation to me in thirty minutes. I will tell you honestly whether and how I can help. And if one conversation is enough, that is a result too.
Book a free discovery callHow this check works
Your answers are assigned to eight dimensions that sit in three layers: the foundation of direction, culture and leadership, the translation of communication and collaboration, and the impact of recognition, talent and employee experience.
What is revealing is less the individual score than the gap between these layers. A strong foundation that does not land in everyday work is something different from an organisation that runs well day to day and has no shared foundation underneath. Each needs a different answer.