You can’t expect critical changes within an organization to go over well if people aren’t aligned to deliver results.
Meet ReadyIndex℠, the fastest way to see if your company is truly ready to deliver on its value—and if not, where to prioritize your time, attention, and capital to make sure it does.
The biggest execution risks—the ones behind 75-90% of failed M&A deals*—are the ones you can’t see or measure.
When you acquire a company, you’re not just inheriting the financials, assets, and systems. You’re also stepping into an organization that’s undergoing massive changes. Roles are likely shifting, processes are merging, and people are trying to make sense of what it all means. This is where alignment breaks down, and where the value you’re hoping to build is either created or lost.
The risks you’re taking can look like:
Teams that aren’t aligned, because leaders assume that saying something once reaches everyone in an organization of 2,000 to 10,000 people.
Managers filling gaps with guesses, because even they don’t have clarity about what matters most.
Decision-making that’s painfully slow and approval-heavy, rather than fast and streamlined.
A lack of trust that increases the likelihood of top talent leaving and taking years of institutional knowledge with them (which takes substantial time & money to replace).
All of these point to hidden misalignment. You can’t see it on a balance sheet, but when it goes unaddressed, it can quietly erode the value of an otherwise successful company.
When you’re so focused on spreadsheets and financials that you forget to look at how aligned the people doing the work are, execution and value creation will stall. Then you’re left pouring time and money into leadership coaching, messaging efforts, or engagement surveys—all worthy investments, but not if you don’t know where the misalignment is even happening.
Right now, you’re gearing up to make a critical change in your organization, but there’s a gap between what leaders expect and how employees actually respond.
Without knowing what’s causing the disconnect between leadership & employees, every day closer to rollout poses a risk to value and talent.
Every critical change comes with uncertainty. Whether it’s a system upgrade, a merger, or a cultural reset, change only works if people understand it and believe in it. This is where most organizations struggle. It’s not that the strategy is bad or wrong, but that the people who need to bring it to life (AKA, the employees) aren’t fully aligned or clear on what’s changing and why.
If you’re an owner preparing to sell, it’s frustrating (and a little scary) to watch the business you’ve built stall under your own initiatives.
You know there’s value in the company, but you’re not sure how well it’ll translate when the time comes to sell. Every project that slows, every breakdown in communication, makes you wonder whether your life’s work will succeed once you’ve passed the torch. Or maybe, it even has you worried that the buyer will see these issues and lay off half the workforce as the “easy solution,” dismantling the culture you’ve been building and damaging the company’s reputation as a whole.
If you’re a PE firm post-acquisition, the pressure is immediate.
You’ve inherited the people, culture, and systems of the company you bought, and you’re accountable for ROI. However, you can’t yet see which areas will deliver and which will drag the business down. Relying on past experience and instincts is part of what makes your PE firm great at what it does, but it’s still hard to know where breakdowns will occur or which gaps will throw off performance, frustrate leaders, or drive away your top talent.
No matter what kind of transformation you’re preparing for, major change requires major alignment. In an M&A, an AI rollout, or even an organizational rebrand, success depends on everyone moving in the same direction.
So, how do you start addressing the misalignment, let alone pinpoint where it’s happening?
When you’ve spent your career focused on numbers alone to generate results, analyzing clarity and trust in an organization can feel… “soft.”
However, these aren’t abstract concepts. They can be measured, tracked, and directly tied to the same KPIs you care most about: revenue acceleration, retention, efficiency, and growth. Plus, these KPIs alone have never been enough to tell you what’s going on in a company beneath the surface. They might show the outcomes of misalignment, but they don’t reveal the root cause.
Most organizations rely on lagging metrics like turnover or missed milestones to gauge health, which means by the time they see a problem, it’s already too late. Readiness, on the other hand, shows how well your people and systems are aligned to deliver on your goals.
That is what actually determines whether execution (and the company overall) will succeed after an M&A or another critical change—and until now, it’s been nearly impossible to measure.
ReadyIndex℠ changes that. Within 30 days, you’ll have a measurable view of readiness that pinpoints exactly when and where alignment will fail, and how to fix it before it compromises the value of a deal or drives your best people straight out the door.
Introducing:
ReadyIndex℠
The strategic execution tool you’ve been missing that reveals where a lack of clarity and trust are slowing performance, increasing costs, or putting results at risk.
What’s included:
Sound like what you need? Here’s what you get in The ReadyIndex℠ Culture & Communication Assessment:
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A private survey that captures the real employee experience and identifies where clarity is missing or trust is breaking down.
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Transforms qualitative issues deep within the organization into tangible indicators that leaders can act on quickly.
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A single number that shows how ready the company is to actually execute on strategic goals, and how much friction it’ll experience along the way.
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Shows how alignment gaps are directly tied to revenue, cost, and risk levers, so you can identify what’s worth fixing first.
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An explanatory walkthrough with leadership to review our findings and help you agree on priorities so decisions can be made quickly.
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View the Readiness Score and track alignment over time to support accountability and accelerate course correction for issues that could threaten value.
Getting started couldn’t be easier.
Here’s how it works:
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Step 1: Schedule a call
We’ll start with a clarity call to talk through your upcoming change and the goals you have in mind. Once a contract is signed, we’ll have a kickoff call to launch the survey and gather essential information about your company.
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Step 2: Complete the survey
We’ll share the ReadyIndex℠ survey with your employees. It’ll stay open for two weeks to give your employees time to complete it. As responses come in, I’ll analyze the results and populate your readiness score, as well as scores gauging clarity and trust across the organization.
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Step 3: Review your results
Once your results are ready, we’ll meet with your leadership team to review the key findings and the recommendations. You’ll walk away knowing where misalignment exists, what to prioritize first, and whether you’d like to move forward independently or with my support in implementing the changes.
The Solution in Action
Real Challenges Solved by ReadyIndex℠
I’ve worked with countless companies over the years that faced risks across their people, processes, and purpose, which slowed execution and compromised performance. With ReadyIndex℠, we identified hidden gaps and captured value at the pace your company strategy requires, rather than losing time and money to (entirely preventable) internal friction and culture misalignment.
Value & Employer Brand Alignment
Professional Services Firm
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The Challenge:
Early attrition at this firm was at an all-time high (12%), recruiting costs were climbing, and exit interviews revealed a clear problem: what leadership promised new hires didn’t match their real experience.
The gap eroded trust, drove turnover costs, and threatened the firm’s ability to compete for top talent.
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The Solution:
ReadyIndex℠ revealed where credibility risks existed and whether employees were ready to believe the updated employer brand.
With hard data to guide them, leadership could address misalignment and confidently move forward with new recruitment messaging.
ERP Implementation
Professional Services Firm
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The Challenge:
The firm was implementing a new ERP platform to modernize HR, payroll, and performance management systems—but past system changes had overpromised & underdelivered.
Leadership knew employee skepticism could threaten adoption and wanted to get ahead of it.
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The solution:
ReadyIndex℠ tracked alignment and guided communication before, during, and after launch. The data showed employees didn’t fully understand the “why” behind the change and doubted leadership’s ability to follow through.
After acting on the findings, the firm achieved a 60% adoption rate within 5 weeks (exceeding past benchmarks), while support requests dropped and onboarding completion times improved. The communication framework build alongside ReadyIndex℠now serves as HR’s ongoing playbook for managing change.
*Interested in participating in a case study with us? Let me know in your booking form, and I’ll give you 10% off ReadyIndex℠ as a thank-you!
When thousands of employees need to move together to deliver value, alignment isn’t optional.
And there’s only one way to know what’s really happening under the surface that other metrics won’t show you.
Sure, there are other ways:
You could rely on outdated reports, gut feelings, or traditional metrics, but these approaches won’t tell you when and where alignment will break down so you can proactively address it.
You could keep investing in leadership coaching & messaging efforts, but without data guiding the focus, you could be throwing money out the window.
You could roll out new initiatives and start execution without checking clarity and trust, but if people aren’t on board, the frustration and confusion could drive top talent out the door.
You could run generic engagement surveys, but they won’t yield actionable insights into communication gaps.
You could hope teams figure it out themselves, but when business is moving fast and expectations are high, every delay or misunderstanding caused by misalignment costs real time and money.
None of these options gets you closer to what you really need: a clear understanding of a people’s alignment to company objectives, or the actionable steps you need to fix the issues. Trust us when we say: there’s a better way.
The No-Nonsense Approach to Realized Alignment
The ReadyIndex℠ Culture & Communication Assessment combines the hard, analytical data that PE firms rely on with the soft skills that help align and build culture, ultimately saving M&A deals from failing.
Here’s what the assessment includes:
A confidential survey for leaders and employees that measures clarity and trust across People, Process, and Purpose
Scoring and analysis across key alignment indicators of clarity and trust
A single Readiness Score showing how well the organization can execute on its strategic goals
Executive insights tied directly to revenue, cost, and risk levers
A live debrief call with leadership to walk through findings and immediate priorities
Add-on dashboard access to view the Readiness Score and track alignment over time
Timeline: 4-5 weeks | Investment: $25,000*
*a fraction of the potential lost value if misalignment goes unchecked and leads to lost deals
Have additional data to be analyzed?
My work with you doesn’t have to stop at ReadyIndex℠.
Believe me when I say that ReadyIndex℠ is like a crystal ball into your company’s alignment—not just because the system works, but because you’ve got an internal comms consultant of nearly 20 years analyzing the results and translating them into actionable insights. If you have extra data that could inform your score, I’ll take it on and integrate it to help give you the clearest picture possible.
Here are a few data points I can cover for an additional investment in both timeline and price:
Existing surveys
Polls
Employee retention
Focus groups and/or 1:1s
Existing processes
Hi, I’m Alejandra
With nearly 20 years of experience in communications, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when company alignment just isn’t there. I’ve helped companies build strategies that stick, roll out new tech that actually improves productivity, and complete successful (and critical) changes without losing half the workforce. And every single one of these wins started with getting the 3 P’s right: People, Processes, Purpose.
It might surprise you, but the “soft stuff”—clarity, trust, communication—is why 75-90% of M&A deals fail. For companies and PE firms focused on the cold, hard numbers, these skills can feel small or optional. But, in reality, they’re what make or break your ability to execute, retain top talent, and protect the value you (or previous owners) worked so hard to create.
I created ReadyIndex℠ because I know from experience that strategies will fail when communication breaks under pressure. My solution gives leaders the data and the communication tools to fix alignment fast, before it costs time and potentially millions in lost revenue.
In seasons of critical change, ReadyIndex℠ is the early warning system you need to protect value creation and improve speed to revenue.
No more guessing or investing in solutions that don’t impact performance. With ReadyIndex℠, you’ll know exactly where alignment will break down so you can fix it before it slows you down, puts deals at risk, or drives away your best people.
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