Digital transformation

Almost none of the difficulty is technical, which is why so much of the spending is misdirected.

What I believe

A transformation programme is an attempt to change how an organisation makes and executes decisions. Software is the instrument, not the subject. When a programme is framed the other way round — as a technology rollout with some change management attached — it produces a modernised version of the same dysfunction, at considerable cost.

What tends to go wrong

The commonest failure is sequencing. Organisations begin with the system that is easiest to buy rather than the process that is most broken, because the first has a vendor advocating for it and the second has no-one. Two years later the difficult thing is still difficult and the budget is gone.

The second is unowned decisions. Every implementation surfaces questions the business has been avoiding — who approves this, when is it finished, which entity carries the cost. If nobody senior answers, the configuration answers instead, permanently and invisibly.

What I look for first

Not the technology estate. I look at how a decision travels: who raises it, who can stop it, how long it takes, and where it is written down. That tells you more about whether a transformation will succeed than any systems audit.

How I work on this, and on what terms, is set out under advisory.