Before you start, stop!
Those first few steps of change

If culture eats strategy then speed and hubris in organizational change, kills culture.

Ignoring culture, its characteristics and responses, will doom the project to repeat past transgressions. This is a fundamental history lesson. But this is only the first lesson of readiness.

The term organizational readiness refers to that very early part of the change process where organizations self-assess their ability to effect change successfully well before project start. The organization can continue applying this assessment over time as one way to measure project direction.

The second lesson is first building your business case for change. This business case, respecting culture, sets the foundation for moving forward, measures readiness and sets the foundation for success metrics.

Ignoring these two basics, and just jumping in and executing, sets the stage for project failure and cultural/organizational resistance.

This resistance, to culture and business case, is fertile ground and it will eat and kill what treads upon it. The final result being an environment without the organizational energy to change, serving as a red flag for future growth.

The organizational drivers for this hubris-like attitude can stem from the culture itself, and/or from the leadership personality of the sponsors as they respond to the stress/inexperience from within themselves, shareholders, regulating stakeholders and/or competitive market pressures. Leadership has a tempo to it, all its own, that feeds or ignores the basics.

The longer you wait to implement the basics the greater the successful project cost and the sharper the cultural pain, with less guarantee of any percentage of success.

Do we wait and do nothing? Do we analyze ourselves into paralysis? Of course not!

As leaders your role is to pragmatically act with intention, and voice your empowered position at the outset. Demonstrate the value of the basics, influence and then execute the first steps as best you can. If need be, constantly measure with awareness if you cannot do it all up front. This will at least mitigate some of the organizational, cultural and project risks.