How to get a transformation off the ground, and keep it flying.
At a glance
- Challenge
- A chief-executive-chaired risk committee kept several enterprise risks under active vigilance. One of them was that the sheer volume of change would break the organisation delivering it, and owning that risk means more than tracking the programmes.
- Andrew’s role
- I co-designed the system for managing change across the enterprise with the Head of Corporate Strategy, and co-owned the organisational-change and employee-engagement risk with him. Within it I ran the instruments, the capability building and the change machinery. The transformation office ran under him.
- Scale / context
- A global biopharmaceutical company with more than 90,000 people and revenues of around 42 billion euros, built through decades of acquisition and growth
- What changed
- A risk committee that could see the trade-off it was actually making, between the pace of change and the organisation’s ability to deliver, with evidence rather than assertion on which side of it the company was.
A strategy can fail with every programme on track, because the organisation has run out of capacity to absorb the change being asked of it. I owned that risk for a company of more than 90,000 people, jointly with its Head of Corporate Strategy, and it sat on the agenda of a risk committee chaired by the chief executive. This is the system we designed to manage it.
The register named a risk the instruments could not yet read
The company was running a portfolio of change from enterprise-wide programmes to single-function redesigns, all at once. Its risk committee, chaired by the chief executive, kept several enterprise risks under active vigilance, and ours was one of them: that the sheer volume of change would break the organisation delivering it.
Owning it means more than tracking the programmes. A programme reports on itself, and a programme that is on track can still be breaking the organisation carrying it. Whether that organisation is still healthy enough to finish is a different question, and when we took the risk on there was no instrument that answered it.
There was a question upstream of that one, and it was the first thing the design had to settle: how much should be flying at all? A portfolio of change is a decision rather than a given. Too many initiatives and nothing lands, because the same people are on all of them. Too few and the strategy stalls. Sizing the portfolio against the strategy is a design choice, and it is easy to make by accident, one approval at a time.
Getting from A to B takes a village, and the village does not report to you
Over a career leading large transformations, I kept finding the most useful lessons in an unexpected place: aviation. Getting a plane full of people safely from A to B is a system. Ground staff, gate agents, cabin crew, pilots and baggage handlers play visible parts, and air traffic controllers and training centres do their work unseen. None of it functions alone, and every part of it serves one outcome: the passenger gets home.
A transformation moves people from A to B in the same way, and it needs the same kind of defined ecosystem. Between us, the Head of Corporate Strategy and I set out what the airspace of change looked like in our company and who had to act in it: what should be flying at all, and how the portfolio was sized against the strategy; who sequenced it; who flew; who trained the pilots; what the instruments read; and which of finance, legal, digital and HR had to act, and when. The overarching structure was my design, co-owned with him. Then each of us ran different components of it through our own teams.
Making the system work required agreement across reporting lines. The people a transformation needs sit in different ones. The transformation office reported into strategy. The instruments, the training and the organisation-design methods reported into me. Finance, legal and digital had their own leaders and their own priorities. Each can do a competent job of its own piece while the organisation absorbs the sum of all of it unmanaged. A blueprint that spans reporting lines is the actual artefact, and it only exists if two or more people with different bosses decide to build it together.
The tower sequences the traffic
Every flight is one of many. Air traffic control sequences them, keeps them safely apart and re-routes them when conditions change. The transformation office was our tower. It ran the day to day of the portfolio, sequenced the work, managed the risk across programmes and made the trade-offs no single programme could make for itself. It looked at every change initiative in the company: structural moves, portfolio moves, the consolidation of fragmented business units, capability building and cost. The enterprise simplification programme, Volcano, was one of the flights in that sky.
Transformation leaders fly with a flight plan, and they train before they fly
Pilots are accountable for flying the plane and landing everyone safely. They communicate deliberately with their co-pilot so it is never unclear who is flying, they lean on the expertise around them, and they never push back from the gate without a flight plan. Transformation leaders carry the same accountability, and the flight plan matters just as much: the destination, the route, the checkpoints and what happens when the weather changes.
Pilots also train for a year and a half or more before they qualify. Leading a transformation asks for several disciplines at once, strategist, programme manager, risk manager, change manager, diplomat and coach, and it is hard on the people doing it as well as on the people being transformed. So the flight school was part of the design. The learning function chose one theme a year to run from the top of the company to the bottom. One year it was AI, digital and data. The year I left, I chose transformation and change adoption: a transformation-leadership programme built with IMD for the people flying the largest programmes, junior versions for managers, and self-serve material on staying well through change.
I would go further and tie the appointment of transformation leaders to the talent and succession strategy. It is a critical experience on the way to the top team, and the experience a future chief executive needs in order to sponsor transformation well.
The cockpit reads the organisation, not the plan
A flight deck without instruments is a cockpit with a view. In good weather that is enough. In cloud it is how aircraft fly into mountains, and transformations run in cloud most of the time.
Programme reporting stayed, and it did its job. The instruments that matter for this risk are not the programme’s own. What tells you whether the organisation is still airworthy sits somewhere else entirely: whether people can see the change actually landing rather than being announced; whether they are carrying more change than they can absorb; whether the structure is getting simpler or just different; what is happening to spans, layers, cost and productivity; and whether the people you cannot afford to lose are still there.
This was the part I built. People analytics, employee engagement and organisational health, read together and over time, beside the delivery reporting and alongside the spans, layers, headcount cost and productivity measures. We fitted them before we needed them and accepted that they would sometimes disagree with the plan. That is what they are for.
The ground crew keeps the aircraft airworthy
The roles on the ground complete the team, and each needs someone who knows it. Finance makes sure the benefits materialise and the costs are optimised. Legal advises on structure, deals and employment law. Digital and data are a must-have partnership, all the more so with what AI and data-driven decisions now make possible. Project management runs the logistics that matter more than people think: roadmaps, rolling plans, progress, risks and issues.
HR’s part was the machinery underneath, and it was mine to run: organisation design and operating-model work as the hardware, change-management methodology as the software, and employment law and works councils alongside them, because in Europe they are never an afterthought.
What it delivered
The committee could see the trade-off it was actually making, between the pace of change and the organisation’s ability to deliver, and it had evidence rather than assertion on which side of it the company was. That gave it confidence that we were managing the transformation as well as we could: holding the tension between driving change as fast as the strategy demanded and not breaking the organisation or the operations. That tension is a paradox rather than a problem, so it is managed rather than solved, and the job of the instruments is to keep it visible.
What I learned
Guiding principles
Do not run a transformation in silos. It takes a village, and the players in the village report into different parts of the organisation. They have to be aligned against one blueprint of the transformation engine at enterprise level, and somebody has to draw it.
Size the portfolio before you sequence it. How much should be flying at all is the first question, and it belongs to strategy rather than to the tower. Left unasked, it gets answered one approval at a time.
Fit the instruments before you need them. A plan reports on itself. The readings that tell you whether the organisation can finish come from somewhere else, and they will sometimes disagree with the plan. That is the point of them.
Speed against strain is a paradox, so manage it rather than solve it. Go as fast as the strategy demands without breaking the organisation or the operations. The job of the system is to let a committee see which way it is currently erring.
Train the pilots as deliberately as you plan the flights. Mastery of large, complex transformation takes years, so each step in responsibility should be judged, and the appointment belongs in the succession strategy.
A blueprint that spans reporting lines is built by people with different bosses. Neither of us could have drawn the whole airspace from inside one function. The co-design was the work.
Why it matters now
Organisations are now adding a portfolio of AI change to a sky that was already full. The first question has not changed, how much should be flying at all, and it still belongs to strategy. The instrument that reads whether people can absorb the answer is still the one to fit first.
If your risk register names the organisation’s capacity for change, the useful test is whether anyone can read it. Draw the airspace before the next approval: what is flying, who sequences it, who flies, who trains them, what the instruments read, and who on the ground has to act. Then find the person with a different boss who will build it with you.