Transformation: No, you do not have an execution problem

It is a story repeated many times: “Our transformation strategy is perfectly clear. But we have a big execution problem” as the member of the executive committee of a large multinational was telling me a few weeks ago. He added: “Now, disruptions are coming from everywhere, we spend millions on transformation plans, we put ‘digital’ and ‘startup’ everywhere, and nothing – nothing! – happens.” Implicitly, of course, and soon very explicitly, the explanation fuses: it is down below that people are incapable! Managers ‘down below’ are not ‘aligned’, so goes the explanation. They do not know how to execute. Or worse: they are resisting change. We must identify the culprits, the traitors! The plan must be executed!

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Educating for the Digital Transformation: Four Common Mistakes

Digital is everywhere. As Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, a Web pioneer and now star investor in the Silicon Valley, wrote: “Software is eating the world.” There is no industry today that is not impacted by the digital revolution. How to prepare our executives, current and future, for this revolution? The question is not new but it seems that many mistakes are made in the approaches, including by those who design training programs on the issue. Let’s review four of these mistakes.
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