Insights · Transformation · 4 minread
Why most transformation programmesfail before they start
There’s a meeting happening right now in a boardroom somewhere. A leadership team is discussing transformation. Someone has prepareda deck. There are timelines, milestones, a budget. Someone uses the word “journey.” Everyone nods.
Six months later, nothing has changed.
I’ve seen this pattern more times than I can count — at BMW, across Volkswagen Group, in retail, in automotive, in companies large and small across Europe and beyond. And after 30 years of working inside and alongside organisations going through change, I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion:
Most transformation programmes fail not because of poor execution. They fail because of poor honesty.
Organisations are remarkably good at planning transformation. They hire consultants, run workshops, define KPIs, buildroadmaps. The documents are often excellent. The PowerPoints are beautiful.
What they’re less good at is telling the truth about why change is actually needed — and what it will cost.
Not financially. I mean in terms of comfort, power, habit and identity.
Real transformation requires someone to say: the way we’ve been doing this is wrong. That’s a hard sentence to say when the people in the room are the ones who built the system that’s now failing. So instead, organisations talk about “optimisation” and “evolution” and “buildingon our strengths.” And the transformation never quite arrives.
Here’s something that took me years to learn: transformation doesn’t happen by consensus. It happens despite it.
Every significant change I’ve been part of — setting up BMW’s national sales company in China, reimagining the retail experience across 45 countries, building new organisational structures from the ground up — came with resistance. Smart, well-intentioned resistance from good people who had legitimate reasons to be cautious.
If we’d waited for consensus, we’d still be waiting.
This doesn’t mean ignoring people or steamrolling objections. It means understanding that the role of leadership in transformation is not to make everyone comfortable with change. It’s to make the cost of not changing more visible than the cost of changing.
The future doesn’t wait for consensus. And neither should you.
Every transformation has one. A problem everyone sees, everyone knows, and nobody names out loud.
Maybe it’s the leader who can’t let go of control. The team that’s been underperforming for years. The strategy that stopped making sense two years ago but cost too much to admit. The culture that says the right things in presentations and does the opposite in practice.
People in transformation processes are often remarkably goodat talking around the elephant. They use careful language, soften the edges, find diplomatic ways to describe undeniable failures. And the elephant just stands there, getting bigger.
I’ve been in rooms where the elephant was so obvious you could feel the temperature drop every time someone got close to naming it. And I’ve learned that the moment someone finally says it out loud — clearly, without aggression, but without euphemism — the energy in the room changes completely.
Not always comfortably. But always honestly.
The pink elephant doesn’t disappear because you ignore it. It disappears when someone has the courage to say: “We all know what the real problem is. Let’s talk about that.”
That’s usually where the real transformation starts.
After everything I’ve seen, I believe transformation succeeds when three things are true:
First: the why is honest.
Not “we want to be more innovative” but “if we don’t change this specific thing, this specific consequence will happen.” Vague whys produce vague action.
Second: the people leading it have skin in the game.
Transformation programmes run by people who won’t be affected by the outcome rarely succeed. Change needs leaders who are genuinely invested — not just professionally, but personally.
Third: someone is willing to be uncomfortable first.
Every transformation needs at least one person who’s willing to say the difficultthing, make the unpopular call, or admit that the current approach isn’t working. That person is often the most valuable one in the room — and the least celebrated.
Before your next transformation initiative, ask yourself one honest question: if this programme succeeds, what will I personally have to give up?
If the answer is nothing, the programme probably won’t succeed.
Change is inevitable. Thriving through it isn’t. But it starts with honesty — about where you are, what’s not working, and what you’re actually willing to do about it.
That’s where real transformation begins.
Michele C. Fuhs is a senior advisor and global keynote speaker working with organisations navigating transformation, innovation and the future ofwork. Based in Bavaria, working worldwide.
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