Five Factors Assessment
A transformation can be well designed and still be badly run.
This assessment reports how well the transformation you are running is being executed, across five factors. It takes about ten minutes and shows you your stage without asking for an email address.
- 36 statements
- About ten minutes
- Stage, breakdown and scorecard
The argument
A transformation that is stalling is rarely stalling for want of a plan. The plan is often the most finished thing about it.
What decides whether it lands is execution. Whether leaders carry it in public rather than attend it. Whether the people affected change what gets built rather than only what gets said. Whether governance can stop something. Whether anyone measures adoption rather than assuming it.
The evidence points at execution too. McKinsey finds that transformations are nearly four times more likely to succeed where leaders model the behaviour changes they ask of everyone else. Prosci finds that programmes with effective sponsorship are nearly threefold more likely to meet their objectives. Neither finding is about the quality of a plan.
This assessment measures execution across the five factors that decide it, and reports each on its own, so a single weak factor is visible rather than averaged away.
What the assessment measures
Five factors, drawn from the ITXF framework. Each is assessed on its own and reported separately, so a single weak factor is visible rather than averaged away.
Leadership Engagement
Are leaders carrying this transformation in public, or attending it?
8 items
Stakeholder Management
Does what stakeholders say change what gets delivered, or only what gets described?
7 items
Communication
Does the reasoning reach people before the detail does?
7 items
Governance
Can this governance stop something, or only watch it?
7 items
Data-Driven Approach
Is adoption measured, or assumed?
7 items
What you receive
- Your placement on the five-stage ladder, shown on screen as soon as you finish. No email address is required for this.
- A breakdown by factor, with your score and stage for each, and where to look next.
- A scorecard as a PDF, which you can keep or take into a steering discussion.
The breakdown and the scorecard are sent to an email address you give us. That is the only point at which we ask for one.
Method and credibility
ITXF came out of doctoral fieldwork rather than from practice looking for a theory. It examines whether the architecture of a transformation holds together, whether it performs, and whether anyone adopts it. This assessment is the execution layer: whether a transformation that has been designed is actually being run.
The research behind it was a doctorate at the University of Portsmouth, studying a shared-services programme across five centres. The five factors are what that work found decided whether change was delivered or merely announced.
The assessment is a structured self-assessment. It reports what you observe about a transformation you are close to, and it is designed to be answered candidly rather than defensively.
Who it is for
This is written for people accountable for a transformation that is already running.
- You are running a transformation and cannot tell whether it is landing.
- You have inherited one and need to know what state it is in before you commit to it.
- You suspect the plan is sound and the execution is not, and you want to say so with something other than an opinion.
How your data is handled
Your answers are integers. There is no free-text box asking what your organisation is doing, because there is nowhere in the system to put one.
Your answers and your result are stored in Switzerland. If you ask for the full breakdown, your name, email address and organisation are stored alongside them.
One strictly necessary cookie keeps your session together so you can resume. There is no advertising, no profiling and no tracker that follows you elsewhere.
You can ask for your data to be deleted at any time, and we will do it.