Your change methodology wasn't built for this world

When traditional change methods are not simply failing. They're pointing you and your organization towards the polar opposite of what AI-era digital transformation requires.

Digital transformation keeps failing, and the usual suspect is execution. Not enough buy-in. Insufficient urgency. Poor communication of the vision. The diagnosis comes pre-packaged in linear change frameworks – Kotter’s eight steps being the most recognisable – and it always points inward: you didn’t follow the steps properly.

Digital transformation in the AI era is even less linear than before. Your organization needs to build its own transformation pathways.

But what if the steps themselves are the problem?

Linear change methodologies were designed for a world of bounded, internally-driven organisational shifts: restructuring a division, rolling out a new process, merging two cultures. They assume the organisation is the relevant unit of analysis, that change moves in one direction, and that you can sequence your way from “urgency” to “anchoring” without the ground shifting beneath you. In short, these methods were conceived for a world of businesses organized as pipelines, not networks of activities and capabilities, with employees and contributors under the exclusive influence of a command-and-control organizational pyramid, not as participant stakeholders with full agency.

Digital transformation in 2026 violates every one of those assumptions. It is not bounded – it reaches into supplier networks, customer relationships, regulatory environments, and the material realities of energy and resource flows. It is not internally driven – AI capabilities, platform dynamics, and policy shifts create conditions no single organisation controls. And it is emphatically not sequential – it requires simultaneous movement across technology, governance, capability, and business model, with constant feedback and recalibration.

This matters especially in complex, tiered industries. A known automotive brand, for instance, is not a company – it is a nested ecosystem of tiered specialist players, each with distinct capabilities, constraints, and transformation timelines. A methodology that treats “the organisation” as a single entity with uniform readiness for change cannot navigate this. It will produce alignment theatre: impressive internal narratives about transformation that bear little relationship to what’s actually happening across the value chain.

The deeper issue is what these frameworks leave unasked. They are silent on who governs the transformation; not who sponsors it, but who has legitimate voice in determining its direction. They are silent on external constraints – planetary boundaries, regulatory tightening, supply chain fragility – that should be shaping what “transformation” even means. And they are silent on the difference between adopting digital tools and reimagining what the organisation exists to do. An automaker exploring mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) or designing vehicles for disassembly is not “implementing change.” It is making governance choices about its relationship to materials, customers, and the biosphere.

What works instead is not another branded methodology. It is an approach hardened by complexity: one that treats the organisation as a collective of collectives, maps the actual landscape before prescribing movement, builds system literacy so people can see what they’re navigating. Critically it needs to treat transformation as a continuous, organic, Darwinian process that is here to stay as companies adjust to ever changing internal and external circumstances. This is not a one-shot initiative or program.

The permanence of transformation requires companies and organizations to develop their “change muscle” and implement specific transformation governance alongside their traditional business governance. And it all has to connect strategy to operations and reach from factory floor and individual contributors – both internal and external – to boardroom and bodies of management. Because integration matters as much as pure capability in this space.

The question for owner-managed businesses is pointed, because you actually have the decision rights to ask it: is your transformation methodology helping you understand your situation and make choices within it? Or is it giving you a sequence to follow so you don’t have to?