We have a lot of conversations about technology and the value it can deliver. Over the last couple of years, while the focus of these conversations has shifted to AI, one thing has stayed the same;
People were using “change” and “transformation” interchangeably to describe three very different types of work.
Fair enough. To most folk they mean the same thing. But it matters because the label you apply shapes what you fund, how you govern it, what you promise people and how you measure success.
Plenty of programmes deliver new technology but change nothing at all. Same processes, same structures, same approval chains, same incentives, and the same decisions made in the same meetings.
That's not a transformation and it’s not much of a change. It's an upgrade.
And there's nothing wrong with an upgrade. Just call it that.
Here's how it works in my head.
An upgrade. New tools, same business.
We want better tools.
Our old, janky system is held together with bits of string and hope. We’re going to upgrade our tech and benefit from a few new features.
We’ve got a fixed scope, fixed budget, fixed go-live date and we'll know quickly whether it worked. Afterwards, our business will operate more or less as it does today.
This is the rare case where change management can sit in the project team and largely is comms and training.
A change. Same business, different way of working.
We want to do things differently.
Everything feels harder than it should. We want to fix how we operate, and if new tech helps us do that, then great. But if we lead with the tech, we’ll automate the mess.
First, some tough questions. What's our operating model? Who decides what? Can we redesign to remove friction? What are we rewarding?
Answering these questions is change management. We’ll still need some comms and training, but it’s a small part of the work.
A transformation. A different business.
We want to become something different. Not necessarily a different product or a different market, but a different organisation.
How we deliver work is going to fundamentally change. Jobs change, roles change, teams change and behaviours change. Tech becomes the catalyst for building new capability that keeps evolving. This isn't a project, and it doesn't have an end date.
That doesn’t mean no accountability and no measurement. It means measuring different things: where decisions actually get made, whether the old ways of working are still running underneath, what leaders ask about in the steering committee. You re-baseline as you learn, and stopping something becomes a decision rather than a failure.
Many programmes are a mix of the three, but it’s worth clearly distinguishing between them because the mismatch causes problems. Sell an upgrade as a transformation and your people feel short-changed. Govern a transformation like an upgrade and you'll end up with an upgrade. Expensively.
None of this is the vendor's problem to solve. It isn't their job to tell you which one you're doing.
This is why the hard work on purpose, people, planning, change, governance and technology matters. Leave them vague and you’ll pick a platform first, then reverse-engineer an ambition big enough to justify what you spent.
The Readiness Guide available on our website walks through six focus areas that determine whether you're delivering a technology project or transforming your business. It's free and it might help you out if you’re stuck.
Want to know where you stand right now? Take our five-minute Readiness Self-Assessment and get a summary report sent direct to your inbox.