We need to reflect, once again, on what “transformation” means and how we define it.

What is becoming abundantly clear is that transformation is not a “moment”.
It never was a kickoff… a memo… a bold announcement from the stage.
That’s communication… that’s not transformation.
In fact, the old trope that transformation is a project might be a failed state as well.

I had a whole bunch of insights from my conversation this week with Phil Gilbert on Thinking With Mitch Joel.

But if you listen carefully to Phil (he led the IBM business transformation across 400,000 people in 180 countries in which none of those people reported to him, and he’s beautifully told the story in his new book, Irresistible Change – A Blueprint For Earning Buy-In And Breakout Success), as he describes what happened inside IBM, you realize something we know but don’t say…
Most transformation efforts fail because they’re projects.
And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense… projects, by definition, end.
Phil didn’t approach IBM’s shift as a cultural aspiration.
He treated it like a product.
And the business that he led that drove this product inside IBM got funded… staffed… built… measured… and iterated.

That distinction matters more than most leaders want to admit.

Because if transformation is a project (or an initiative), it gets squeezed between quarterly targets and status meetings.
If it’s a product, it gets roadmap discipline.
If it’s a project, it relies on enthusiasm.
If it’s a product, it requires ownership.
If it’s a product, it’s something you keep selling.

IBM didn’t “encourage” design thinking… they operationalized it for their transformation.

New practices.
New team structures.
New expectations for how problems were framed and solved.
New ways of engaging customers.

Lots of “new” for a business that “knew” what to do in their industry.

And here’s where it gets rigorous (and super-interesting).
Culture wasn’t treated as something soft… that will come as results unfold.
It was treated as execution infrastructure.
Not posters… not principles… not aspirational language.
Culture became the mechanism through which decisions were made and how ideas flowed.
How teams defined problems.
How tradeoffs were evaluated.
How priorities were set.
How results were measured.

That’s a very different posture from most change efforts I’ve come across.

Because most companies try to change behavior by announcing new ways the organization “should” be thinking and doing.
Phil’s work pushes the idea that you change behavior by redesigning the system that produces it.

And then there’s the scaling problem… making it work everywhere and anywhere for everyone.

Mandates don’t scale transformation… narratives do.
IBM’s “Hallmark” program (that’s what Phil’s team called the product) didn’t just train people.
It created visible proof.
Internal case studies… stories of success.
Artifacts that showed what good looked like.
Change didn’t spread because it was required.
It spread because it was working.

And what happened next?

Other teams and departments had to qualify (and pay) to be next in line for their transformation.
Yes… they were begging for it.

That’s the part that stuck with me.

And, it makes perfect sense.
We love to say transformation is hard.
But often what we mean is this:
We didn’t treat it seriously enough and nobody inside the organization was buying what we were selling.
We funded a strategy… we measured the revenue… we staffed the operations.
And we hoped culture would take care of itself… pull itself up from the bootstraps and be the “new” us.
IBM’s success in this transformation is a reminder that culture is not the byproduct of strategy.
It is the system that determines whether strategy lives or dies.

So maybe the better question for leaders isn’t: “How do we drive transformation?”

Maybe it’s: “If this transformation disappeared tomorrow… would the organization feel it in its operating system… or just in its messaging?”

Because if it lives in the system, it’s real… if it lives in the slides, it’s just more communications.

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