True North
All change is about people. Success means bringing together and leading many more strands of engagement than is often appreciated. You need clarity on where and how to start, the talent needed and the cognitive capacity to balance the dependencies of transformation. Then you can see your True North.
Organisational Transformation in an Era of Accelerating Change
Transformation is not easy. Many change programmes fail to achieve their goals, not because of technology shortcomings, but due to employee resistance and a lack of cohesive leadership. The real challenge lies in responding effectively to the accelerating pace of change, where markets evolve rapidly, technologies continuously advance, and customer expectations shift in real time.
Every transformation initiative is fundamentally about people, and having the right talent in place. Success depends on assembling teams with expertise in enterprise architecture, product, engineering, process, data, and customer engagement, all led by a seasoned organisational change leader who can navigate complexity and drive alignment.
These domains are deeply interconnected. While it’s tempting to begin with technology, the real starting point is understanding how systems are embedded within business processes, and how legacy structures and technical debt often stem from a lack of coherent enterprise architecture. Poor data quality and fragmented systems further complicate efforts to unlock value through analytics and insight.
To build a truly customer-centric organisation, leaders must shift focus to the internal value chain and adopt an end-to-end process mindset. This means breaking down silos and rethinking how work flows across the organisation. Automating broken processes only reinforces inefficiency; instead, process improvement and system refactoring must come first.
Understanding the customer: who they are, what they value, and where their experience of your service falls short is essential. Without this clarity, organisations risk delivering solutions that miss the mark. Engagement must be deep, continuous, and insight-driven.
Understanding the customer and the gap between their perceived and experienced value is vital.
Executives often struggle to grasp the full potential of transformation, especially when their accountability is confined to functional silos. That’s why appointing the right leader, someone who can build cross-functional teams and focus them on the activities that truly drive change, is critical.
Ultimately, transformation is not about technology alone. It’s about organisational agility: the ability to adapt, align, and act with speed and purpose. Leaders must begin by capturing their core obligations to customers, then redesign their ways of working to deliver on those obligations. This includes defining the products and services that create value, identifying the activities required to deliver them, and shaping roles around those activities, not the other way around.
By doing so, organisations can build structures that are lean, responsive, and capable of delivering sustained value at a lower, more sustainable cost.