You've Appointed a Transformation Director. Are You Actually Ready to Transform?

I’ve spent more than twenty years working in organisational change and transformation, and I’ve recently found myself questioning an assumption I hadn’t even realised I was making. I assumed that when an organisation recognised the need for transformation, committed significant investment and appointed someone with the expertise to lead it, there would already be a reasonably shared understanding among its executives of what transformation actually involved.

I’m beginning to realise that may have been a rather naive assumption on my part.

It’s something I’ve been reflecting on following conversations about what needs to happen to successfully transform an organisation, particularly when the initial investment has been driven by the need to replace ageing technology. In one such conversation, I was explaining why understanding existing processes, defining future ways of working, establishing business rules and addressing data quality were all important activities before we could confidently determine how a new system should operate. The response was essentially that we already knew what wasn’t working and what needed to be different, so why did we need to spend time going through all of that again?

I could understand the frustration behind the question, particularly when an organisation has been discussing the same problems for years and people are understandably eager to see something happen. But I couldn’t help wondering, if we’ve known what’s wrong and what needs to change for so long, why hasn’t it changed?

And that question has stayed with me, because I think it exposes something quite important about the difference between recognising the need for transformation and understanding what it actually takes to achieve it.

Knowing what needs to change isn’t the same as knowing how to change it

Most executives know their businesses extraordinarily well. They understand where people are frustrated, which processes are inefficient, where systems are creating limitations and which problems seem to resurface no matter how many times they’re discussed. They may have spent years trying to improve those things, often while managing the competing pressures of keeping the business operating, meeting financial expectations and responding to whatever new challenge has emerged that week.

So when someone arrives and starts asking questions about how work is currently performed, I can appreciate why it might feel as though we’re going backwards rather than making progress, particularly when the executives involved believe they’ve already established what needs to be fixed.

But I’ve come to think there’s a significant difference between being familiar with a problem and having the shared understanding, decisions and organisational commitment required to resolve it.

Take something as seemingly straightforward as inconsistent processes. An executive might know that different teams are performing the same activity in different ways and that standardisation would improve efficiency. But agreeing that processes should be standardised doesn’t tell us what the standard process should be, which variations are genuinely necessary, how the process needs to operate across functions or what business rules should govern the decisions people make along the way. And even when we’ve agreed on those things, we still need to consider how people will move from their existing ways of working to the new ones, particularly when the changes affect responsibilities, established practices or the way performance is measured.

The same applies to data. An organisation can spend years talking about poor data quality, but recognising the problem doesn’t resolve who owns the data, how it should be defined, what rules govern its creation and maintenance, or who has the authority to make decisions when different functions have competing requirements.

These might sound like relatively straightforward matters until we start trying to resolve them across an entire organisation, where different departments have developed their own ways of working, often for perfectly understandable reasons. And it’s frequently at that point that we discover the problem isn’t simply that nobody has implemented the solution. It’s that the organisation hasn’t yet made some of the decisions required for a solution to work.

I think this is where transformation can become uncomfortable, because the work starts to expose inconsistencies, assumptions and unresolved decisions that may have existed for years. And while it’s tempting to believe that implementing new technology will somehow resolve those things, the reality is that technology often forces us to confront them, sometimes at the most expensive and inconvenient point in the program.

Why is transformation expertise treated differently?

This is probably the question I’ve found myself thinking about most, because I’ve noticed something interesting about the way transformation expertise is sometimes received compared with other executive disciplines.

When I work with a manufacturing executive, I don’t presume to tell them how to manufacture their products. I might ask questions about their operations, explore how their processes connect with the rest of the business or challenge an assumption when I can see broader organisational implications, but I recognise that they bring expertise I don’t have. The same applies to finance, supply chain and the many other disciplines represented around an executive table.

Yet when it comes to transformation, I’ve sometimes found myself spending a surprising amount of time explaining, justifying and occasionally defending the professional practices involved in doing the very work I’ve been appointed to lead. And I’ve been wondering why that happens.

Perhaps it’s because everyone has experienced change, and that familiarity creates a sense that the discipline itself is relatively straightforward. Most executives have been involved in restructures, system implementations, process improvements or organisational change initiatives, and they’ve developed opinions about what works and what doesn’t, often based on experiences that were expensive, disruptive or unnecessarily complicated. Those experiences are valuable, and I’d be concerned about any Transformation Director who wasn’t interested in understanding them.

But having experienced organisational change isn’t necessarily the same as understanding how to design and deliver enterprise-wide transformation, just as having worked with financial reports doesn’t automatically make someone an expert in financial management.

I also suspect the nature of the role contributes to the tension. Unlike many executive disciplines, transformation doesn’t sit neatly within a single functional boundary. The people, processes, data and technology involved are distributed across the organisation, usually under the accountability of executives who have their own priorities, budgets and performance expectations. Yet the Transformation Director is expected to bring those elements together to achieve outcomes that no individual function can deliver independently.

That inevitably means asking questions about how other executives’ functions operate, challenging established practices and sometimes suggesting that decisions which have historically been made within individual departments need to be considered from an enterprise perspective. I can appreciate how that might occasionally feel intrusive, particularly when an executive has spent years developing deep expertise in their area of responsibility.

But I think there’s an important distinction between questioning someone’s functional expertise and helping them understand how that expertise needs to connect with the rest of the organisation. The manufacturing executive should absolutely determine what the business needs from its manufacturing operations, just as finance should establish the financial requirements and controls necessary to operate effectively. The challenge is ensuring those decisions work together, rather than creating solutions that are individually sensible but collectively problematic.

And that’s where I believe transformation expertise has an important role to play.

Perhaps we haven’t helped ourselves

I do think we need to acknowledge that those of us working in transformation have probably contributed to some of the confusion about what the discipline involves. We’ve developed an extraordinary amount of terminology, frameworks and methodologies over the years, and while much of it serves a valuable purpose, I’ve also seen how easily transformation programs can become consumed by their own processes. I’ve certainly encountered situations where the volume of documentation, reporting and governance seemed completely disproportionate to what the organisation was actually trying to achieve, so I can understand why executives might be sceptical when someone arrives with another framework or tells them they need to spend several weeks documenting something they believe they already understand.

But I wonder whether part of the problem is that we’ve become so familiar with the work involved in transformation that we forget other people don’t necessarily understand why we’re asking them to do it. When I talk about mapping current-state processes, for example, I’m thinking about establishing how work actually happens across the organisation, identifying where inconsistencies exist, understanding the dependencies between functions and creating a reliable foundation for designing future ways of working. An executive who’s been discussing the same operational problems for years, however, might reasonably wonder why we’re spending time documenting processes that everyone already knows aren’t working particularly well.

And that’s where I think we have a responsibility to explain the value of what we’re proposing in language that connects with what executives are trying to achieve. If I can’t explain how understanding the current state will help us make better decisions about the future, or how establishing business rules before configuring a system might prevent expensive rework later, then I haven’t done a particularly good job of helping people understand why the work matters.

I don’t expect executives to accept everything I recommend simply because transformation is my area of expertise, and I think they absolutely should challenge activities that appear unnecessary or disproportionate. But there’s an important difference between questioning whether an activity adds value and assuming it can be bypassed because the underlying problem is already familiar.

And I suspect that’s a distinction we need to become much better at navigating, particularly when the pressure to demonstrate progress makes it tempting to move straight into implementation.

An executive sponsor is essential, but is one enough?

There’s another assumption I think we need to examine, and it’s one that sits at the heart of how organisations approach change.

In change management, we’re all familiar with the importance of having an executive sponsor. Someone with sufficient authority and influence to champion the initiative, secure resources, remove obstacles and demonstrate visible commitment to the change. It’s a well-established principle, and one I absolutely agree with. I’ve seen the difference effective sponsorship can make, particularly when people need confidence that a change is genuinely supported by the organisation’s leadership.

But I’ve been wondering whether our familiarity with that model sometimes leads us to underestimate what’s required when we’re talking about transformation across an entire enterprise.

An executive team might collectively recognise the need for transformation, approve a significant investment, appoint a Transformation Director and nominate one of its members to sponsor the program. On paper, everything looks perfectly reasonable. There’s a business case, a governance structure, an executive sponsor and someone with the expertise to lead the work. Everyone can feel confident that the transformation has the senior leadership support it needs.

But what happens if the remaining executives then return to managing their respective functions, assuming that responsibility for delivering the transformation now sits with the sponsor and the Transformation Director?

I think this is where we need to be much clearer about the difference between executive sponsorship and executive ownership.

When we’re talking about a change initiative that primarily affects one part of an organisation, having a committed executive sponsor with the authority to make decisions and influence the people involved can be enormously effective. But enterprise transformation is different because we’re changing how the organisation operates across functions, and those changes inevitably extend into the responsibilities of every executive.

We might have one person sponsoring the program, but that doesn’t mean they can make all the decisions about how manufacturing, finance, supply chain, technology and the other functions need to operate in the future. Nor can the Transformation Director, regardless of how experienced or capable they might be. Those decisions require the knowledge, judgement and active involvement of the executives who are accountable for those parts of the business, and because the functions are interconnected, they also require those executives to work together.

And that’s the part I think can get overlooked. Every executive might agree that transformation is important, support the investment and attend the occasional steering committee meeting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actively leading the transformation within their own function or taking responsibility for the decisions that need to be made across the enterprise.

An executive sponsor can champion transformation and help create the conditions for it to succeed, but they cannot be the only executive who owns it. Every member of the executive team needs to understand what the transformation requires of their function, take accountability for making the necessary changes and participate in resolving the decisions and dependencies that sit between functions.

I also think this has implications for how we measure executive performance. If we’re asking leaders to make decisions in the interests of the enterprise while continuing to measure and reward them almost exclusively on the performance of their individual departments, we’re potentially creating competing expectations. An executive might genuinely support the transformation but still find themselves making decisions that protect their functional outcomes, even when those decisions create difficulties elsewhere.

And perhaps that’s one of the most significant shifts enterprise transformation asks of an executive team. It requires them to think and operate as collective leaders of the organisation, with shared accountability for the outcomes they’re trying to achieve, rather than as a group of functional leaders who have delegated responsibility for transformation to one of their colleagues.

The Transformation Director can’t transform the organisation alone

I’ve been thinking about how easily responsibility for transformation can become confused with responsibility for coordinating the program. An organisation creates a senior role, appoints someone with the relevant experience and gives them accountability for delivering the transformation. The executives continue managing their respective functions, while the Transformation Director is expected to bring together the activities required to move the organisation towards its future state.

On the surface, that sounds entirely reasonable, and there certainly needs to be someone responsible for leading and coordinating the work. But there’s a difference between being accountable for the effective delivery of a transformation program and having the authority to make all the business decisions required for the organisation to operate differently.

A Transformation Director can bring the expertise, structure and coordination needed to guide the organisation through change. They can help establish a shared understanding of how the business currently operates, facilitate decisions about future ways of working, identify dependencies and risks, and ensure that the different activities required for transformation are appropriately connected.

What they can’t do is independently determine how every function should operate, resolve every competing business priority or make people adopt new ways of working. Nor should they be expected to.

Those responsibilities remain with the executives who lead the business, and I think this is where transformation asks something quite significant of an executive team. It requires leaders to examine existing practices openly, including those that may have developed under their own leadership, and to remain curious about whether the problems they believe they understand might have causes they haven’t fully considered.

It also requires them to make decisions that extend beyond their individual departments, sometimes accepting that the best outcome for the organisation may be less convenient for their own function. And it requires them to take an active role in helping their people understand, adopt and sustain new ways of working, rather than assuming that responsibility sits with the transformation team or an external implementation partner.

I’ve always believed that people are more likely to embrace change when they can see that their leaders genuinely understand and support it. But when we’re talking about enterprise transformation, I think that expectation needs to extend beyond visible support. Executives need to be involved in shaping the future organisation, resolving the difficult decisions and ensuring that the changes being introduced are reflected in how their functions actually operate.

Otherwise, we risk creating a situation where the transformation team is working incredibly hard to deliver change while the organisation’s existing leadership structures, accountabilities and behaviours continue reinforcing the very practices we’re trying to improve.

The work we avoid doesn’t necessarily disappear

I understand the pressure to demonstrate progress, particularly when an organisation has been discussing the same problems for years, significant investment has been approved and people are understandably eager to see improvements. When a new system has been selected, there’s a natural desire to move into implementation as quickly as possible, and activities such as understanding current processes, defining future ways of working and resolving data issues can appear to be slowing things down.

But I’ve come to think about this in terms of where we choose to spend our time and money, because the decisions we avoid making at the beginning of a transformation program have an unfortunate habit of reappearing later.

If we haven’t established how a process should operate across different functions, we’ll eventually need to resolve that question when configuring the system, testing the solution or trying to make it work in practice. If we haven’t agreed on data definitions and ownership, those inconsistencies are likely to emerge when information needs to move between systems or support enterprise-wide reporting. And if we haven’t considered how people’s roles and responsibilities will change, we’ll discover those issues when employees are expected to adopt new ways of working that may conflict with their existing accountabilities.

By that point, the cost of resolving the problems can be considerably greater, particularly when decisions have already been embedded in system configurations, project plans and implementation activities.

And I think this is one of the reasons organisations can find themselves several years and millions of dollars into a transformation program, with new technology, revised processes and exhausted employees, wondering why the benefits they expected haven’t materialised.

Of course, that doesn’t mean every transformation needs an elaborate methodology or months of analysis before anything can happen. The approach should always be proportionate to the organisation, its existing capabilities and the complexity of the change being undertaken. There will be situations where much of the necessary work has already been done, and others where the organisation needs to invest considerably more effort in understanding its current state and agreeing on its future direction.

But the fundamental decisions still need to be made, and I’d much rather help an organisation make them deliberately than watch it discover the consequences of avoiding them halfway through implementation.

So, are we actually ready to transform?

The more I’ve reflected on this, the more I’ve realised that I may have been expecting executives to understand the work involved in transformation simply because they’ve recognised the need for it. And perhaps that was an unreasonable expectation, because why would someone who has spent their career developing expertise in manufacturing, finance or another discipline necessarily understand the full range of activities required to deliver enterprise-wide transformation?

That’s part of the expertise a Transformation Director is appointed to bring, and I think we have a responsibility to help executives understand the process, demonstrate the value of the work and build confidence that the approach we’re recommending is appropriate for the outcomes they’re trying to achieve.

But I also believe there’s a corresponding responsibility on the organisation to recognise that transformation requires more than funding a program, appointing a leader and nominating an executive sponsor. It requires every executive to participate in understanding how the business operates today, make sometimes difficult decisions about how it should operate in the future, and take accountability for leading their people through the changes required.

It also requires a willingness to trust the expertise and professional disciplines being brought to the process, while retaining the curiosity and constructive challenge that should exist within any effective executive team. That trust needs to be earned, of course, but without it, I suspect the Transformation Director can spend so much time explaining and defending the work that very little energy remains for actually progressing it.

And perhaps that’s the part I’ve been underestimating.

I’ve always understood that transformation requires people across an organisation to change how they work, but I’ve been reflecting on whether we spend enough time considering what it requires of the people who lead them. Because if the executive team isn’t prepared to examine existing practices, resolve competing priorities, make enterprise-wide decisions and actively lead the transition, I’m not sure how much transformation can realistically be achieved, regardless of how capable the person appointed to lead the program might be.

Ultimately, the success of transformation depends on whether the organisation develops the capabilities, behaviours and ways of working required to achieve the outcomes it set out to deliver. And those outcomes depend on the executive team just as much as they depend on the transformation function.

So perhaps when an organisation decides to appoint a Transformation Director and nominate an executive sponsor, there’s another conversation worth having before the program even begins.

Does every member of the executive team understand that they’ve just made a commitment themselves, and are they genuinely prepared to do the work that commitment requires?

Because an organisation can delegate responsibility for coordinating transformation, but it cannot delegate away the leadership required to make it happen.