Transformation Is Still Being Pushed, Not Pulled

Organisations are investing heavily in transformation, but Executive sponsorship is often still passive. Transformation is being pushed by programmes and teams rather than pulled through the organisation by the ExCo.

Transformation is not suffering from a lack of investment. Most organsiations have or are considering a Transformation Director, or Chief Transformation Officer.

Most organisations have programmes, teams, roadmaps, technology budgets and governance structures in place. In many cases, they have invested heavily.

The bigger issue is that transformation is still too often being pushed through the organisation by programme teams rather than pulled through it by the Executive team and that distinction matters.

A transformation function can be well staffed, well funded and technically capable, but if the ExCo is not consistently sponsoring the direction, reinforcing the purpose and using the same language, the programme remains something the organisation is being asked to comply with rather than something it is collectively trying to achieve.

That is where a lot of momentum gets lost.

The capability exists. The pull often does not.

One of the more interesting leadership challenges we are hearing is that building a transformation team is not necessarily the hardest part.

The harder part is “weaponising” that capability across the organisation. In other words, how do you take the skills, process discipline, insight and delivery capability sitting inside a transformation function and make them part of the way the wider business operates?

That requires more than a programme office, it requires Executive sponsorship strong enough that transformation is not perceived as a separate activity, but as part of how the organisation thinks, prioritises and makes decisions.

Without that pull from the top, the transformation team can become the organisation’s internal engine room: working hard, producing plans and pushing activity forward, while the rest of the business remains only partially engaged.

Technology is increasingly the enabler, not the transformation

Another recurring issue is the tendency to treat technology as the transformation itself.

Technology can be critical. It can remove friction, improve customer journeys, unlock data, automate activity and change cost structures but it does not define the future state.

The strategic question has to come first.

What should the organisation, function or customer experience be capable of in five years that it cannot do today?

What should a future Chief Underwriting Officer, Chief Claims Officer, COO or Chief Customer Officer be able to achieve differently?

Only then should the organisation work backwards into process, capability, data and technology, too many programmes still begin with a system or platform decision and then try to construct the strategic rationale around it.

That is the wrong way round.

Programmes are still being launched without a sufficiently clear north star

Large transformation programmes can run for five or ten years.

Over that period, they may span three or four Executive sponsors, changes in strategy, changes in ownership and shifts in regulation or customer expectation.

Yet one of the most basic questions can still produce several different answers:

What is this programme actually trying to achieve?

If different members of the Executive team describe the end state differently, the organisation does not have a transformation problem, it has a leadership alignment problem, a clear north star does not mean every detail is fixed.

It means the organisation can consistently articulate:

• what will be materially different
• why that change matters
• what outcomes the programme is there to create
• and which decisions should be made differently as a result

Without that clarity, transformation becomes vulnerable to scope creep, competing agendas and activity without impact.

Sponsorship is not the same as ownership

Many Executive teams would say they sponsor transformation.

Fewer truly own it.

There is a difference between attending a steering committee and repeatedly reinforcing the change through decisions, behaviours and trade-offs.

If the transformation team is always pushing for attention, asking leaders to engage, reminding the business why the programme matters and constantly re-explaining the case for change, sponsorship is probably too passive.

Real Executive ownership creates pull, people understand that the transformation is not something “the programme” is doing, it is something the business is doing.

Organisations are often reluctant to stop programmes that no longer fit

Another pattern is the reluctance to challenge major programmes once they are underway.

Particularly where significant investment has already been committed, stopping or materially changing direction can feel like an admission of failure.

So organisations continue, governance remains in place, workstreams carry on, milestones are reported, yet the strategic direction may have shifted. The better leadership question is not:

“How much have we already spent?”

It is:

“If we were making this decision today, would we still start this programme in the same way?”

If the answer is no, continuing simply because of sunk cost is not discipline. It is inertia.

Transformation capability is still too often rented rather than built

External consultancies can play a valuable role.

They can bring specialist knowledge, pace, external challenge and experience from other organisations.

The risk is when transformation capability leaves with them.

If an organisation repeatedly has to bring in external firms to diagnose problems, shape the programme and drive delivery, it is worth asking whether enough capability is being developed internally.

That is not an argument against consultants, it is an argument for ensuring that the organisation gets stronger as a result of using them, the most mature outcome is not simply a successful programme, it is an organisation that becomes progressively better at transformation itself to a pint in the future that the culture of transformation is so embedded, perhaps the role of the transformation specialists no longer exists.

The real leadership signal

The next stage of transformation maturity may not be about building larger transformation functions.

It may be about making transformation thinking less dependent on them, that means Executive teams who can articulate change clearly, functional leaders who think beyond their own silos.

Future Chiefs who have spent time in transformation, strategy or enterprise programmes rather than progressing through one function alone, and organisations that treat transformation capability as part of leadership capability.

Perhaps the strongest transformation function is ultimately the one that makes itself less necessary over time.

Not because change stops, because the organisation has learnt how to change.

At Douglas Jackson, we work with organisations appointing senior leaders across Transformation, Operations, Customer, Data and Strategy. The strongest briefs are rarely just about who has done it before. They are about who can align people, influence the organisation and turn strategic intent into sustained change.