I have spent more than three decades in the trenches of business transformation. Since starting my career as a management and technology consultant in 1987, I have moved between roles: from external advisor to boards and leadership teams, to C-level executive carrying the weight of transformation on my own shoulders.
My work has taken me across industries — from manufacturing to services, from government to the public sector — and across continents. Europe, the Americas, Asia. Each setting has revealed the fascinating ways culture shapes the transformation journey.
This White Paper is the result of that journey. It’s not a manual for guaranteed success — no such thing exists. Instead, it’s a field guide to avoiding the most frequent and fatal mistakes. My hope is that these insights give you the foresight and confidence to steer clear of the pitfalls — and deliver the transformation your organisation truly needs.
This white paper presents the insights from this vast repository of experience and knowledge, with the addition of my own 35 years as a management advisor and senior executive. I have supported and been responsible for many successful business transformations and certainly experienced my share of failures.
It turns out that business transformation “train wrecks” share some common characteristics, which I have clustered around four central themes:
1
Scope, time and a burning platform
2
Governance and management of transformation programs
3
Frameworks, methodologies, staff involvement and training
4
Partnering with external providers of skills, experience and technology
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