The Sweet Spot of Change: Balancing Readiness and Ripeness
In the world of leadership, timing isn’t just important — it’s everything. In the midst of any significant leadership challenge, there’s a delicate balance between readiness and ripeness — a balance that can determine whether your team is poised to make meaningful progress. Understanding this balance is helpful for navigating complex, adaptive challenges, where the old playbook of technical solutions just won’t cut it.
Readiness speaks to the collective willingness and ability to engage with the challenge, while ripeness refers to the opportune moment when the conditions are right for change. When these two elements align, powerful transformation happens. But when they don’t, the path forward can be fraught with frustration, resistance and missed opportunities.
Assessing Readiness: The Dance Between Will and Skill
Readiness is about gauging the “will and skill” of your team. Do they have the necessary competencies to tackle the issue at hand? More importantly, are they willing to engage with it on a deep, transformative level? High readiness means your team acknowledges the leadership moment and is prepared to dive in.
When readiness is low, you may find people appealing to leaders or seeking easy answers.
I remember a time early in my career when I was part of a team tasked with “centering the voices of the marginalized”. On paper, everyone seemed ready — we had the right theory of change But as time rolled on without meaningful action, it became clear that while the readiness was there in terms of skill, the will was sorely lacking. People, myself included, were resistant to the deeper personal work required to set aside our notion of progress. It took a step back to realize that while we were technically ready, we weren’t ripe for the change — something needed to shift in the way we engaged with ourselves and with each other
Understanding Ripeness: The Art of Timing and Context
Ripeness, on the other hand, is about timing and context. Even if your team is ready, if the environment or the broader system isn’t ripe for change, efforts can stall. High ripeness occurs when the leadership moment is acknowledged, and there’s a collective recognition that now is the time to act.
When ripeness is low, people might still be clinging to old solutions, or worse, denying that there’s even a problem to solve.
In that same scenario with my previous team, not only was some internal adaptive work needed individually, the truth was that centering the worldviews of others was at best priority number 17 on the organization’s list. Research consistently shows that organizations, and people, only act on their top three priorities. Instead of pushing forward, we focused on both readying and ripening the environment — addressing the underlying fears and uncertainties that were holding people back and “raising the heat” about the gap between the organization’s espoused values and its lived values. It was only after this groundwork was laid that the real change could begin.
The lesson is clear: pushing forward without considering ripeness is like planting seeds in frozen ground — no matter how ready you are, nothing will grow until the conditions are right.
Aligning Readiness and Ripeness
So how do you, as a leader, align readiness and ripeness to effectively take on an adaptive challenge? The answer, as always, is contextual. Start by ‘getting on the balcony’ — understanding where your team stands on both axes. When readiness and ripeness are high, take action. If either is low, build adaptive capacity or develop partnerships to prepare for change.
Readiness and ripeness remind us that leadership is as much about timing as skills. It’s knowing when to push forward and when to step back and create conditions for progress. By aligning these elements, you’ll better navigate the complexities of leadership and foster meaningful change.
Success in leadership isn’t about charging ahead — it’s about knowing when the apple is ready to pick.
