Why digital transformations fail: The why, how and what of real change

[Jess] (0:02 - 0:08)

Organizations try to just throw AI on top of what they're already doing.

[Pinja] (0:12 - 1:33)

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Hello and welcome back to the DevOps Sauna. So today we're going to talk about transformations. You might have heard the word, you might have been part of one, but I'm going to make a bold claim here.

So if your transformation is actually called a transformation, you might have already lost the game. I know it might sound a little bit harsh to say like this, but we keep hearing about organizations going through transformations and often we hear them failing. So let's talk about what is actually transforming and what we are doing while we are in the middle of a transformation.

I'm not alone here today to talk about this, but I'm joined by my lovely colleague, Jess Fraser-Darling, our People and Business Transformation Lead from Eficode. Hi, Jess. 

[Jess] (1:33 - 2:13)

Hello. Thanks for having me. 

[Pinja] (2:14 - 2:50)

Welcome. I'm so happy that you're joining me here.

So Jess, you also have a background from being on the business side. You're not only leading our People and Business Transformation stuff right now, but you've been part of transformations in an organization. So what do we mean when we say transformation?

[Jess] (1:33 - 2:13)

I think this is a loaded word in many senses. Historically, we hear about people saying we want to go through a transformation. We want to get to this nirvana state.

The reality is that actually it's more about evolution because if you decide that you want to be in state X by the end of 2027, realistically, what's actually needed by the time you get halfway through 2026 is probably quite different from what it looks like three months ago or a year ago. So I think evolution is far more important to think about instead of transformation. But the term is used quite loosely, I think, and it can be quite scary for people as well, right?

[Pinja] (2:14 - 2:50)

Like, that's what I mean when I say everybody knows a transformation. Everybody's been part of a transformation at some point during their career. And it can be a very misleading thing when you say that this is what we're going to do during the year.

And when you actually start doing it, the reality hits. You might see that, well, actually, look at this pile of whatever we find. And it's actually going to change our route.

We are looking at a destination that we mistake for a vehicle. That is somebody saying, like, one day, like, hey, we need one AI, please. Or we need one DevOps.

Or can we have one Jira? And they're not exactly business outcomes.

[Jess] (2:50 - 3:43)

No, absolutely. And I quite often think about this as we talk about what's at the top of the mountain, but not necessarily about how you climb it or how you get there. And I think that both are important, actually.

So you need to know what you're aiming for. And I don't think anyone is ever aiming to transform. Oh, they shouldn't be anyway, right?

You should have some kind of business KPI or measure or target in mind or some mission in mind. Then you apply your strategy and you work out how your strategy get you to the peak, effectively. And actually, the realism is that once you get to the peak, you probably realise there's another one beyond that.

And the world looks very different by the time you get there. And that's OK. But yeah, often, I think we should be thinking far more in hypothesis and theories and the why, rather than just reaching that single state that I think often gets, you know, too much enthusiasm put behind that one single thing.

Like it's the be all and end all.

[Pinja] (3:43 - 3:58)

Yeah, I think when we were planning this episode with you, Jess, like you mentioned the FOMO effect. So do we see organisations and, I think I have a hypothesis here, but do we see organisations whose the why is actually the FOMO because the other ones are doing it. We should be doing it too.

[Jess] (3:59 - 4:59)

We do. So actually, way more than you think. And, you know, whether we're talking about transformations that are waterfall to agile, from project to product, nowadays in the current kind of hype, it's AI.

I've had conversations with customers where I've said, you know, there's a lot of discussion around adoption and making sure that people are using these things. But why is it that you're wanting to use them? What are you striving for?

And I've even had customers say, well, everyone else is doing it. And it's at that point where I think we really need to kind of pull it back and say, OK, well, FOMO is one thing. So the FOMO effect is one thing.

But actually, how do you use that as a mechanism to drive towards the actual result that you're aiming for? So do you know what? Everyone else using something like AI or everyone else applying agile, if actually what you're striving for is faster feedback loops, the ability to get to market quicker, the increase in speed to innovate, that's all fine.

And you can leverage, you know, scrum, SAFe, AI to get you there. But like you said, it's the vehicle. You need to think about that.

[Pinja] (5:00 - 5:13)

This might be triggering to somebody, but I highly doubt that anybody, any business leader at any point actually has woken up in the morning and said, actually, wow, I want SAFe just for the sake of SAFe. 

[Jess] (5:13 - 5:15)

I bet they have, though. I bet they have.

[Pinja] (5:15 - 5:18)

Yes, but that cannot be the “Why”. 

[Jess] (5:18 - 5:19)

Should they? No.

[Pinja] (5:19 - 5:28)

No. Nobody should be waking up in the morning saying, wow, I want SAFe for my organization. Not for like, we're not SAFe haters.

Let's get this out there.

[Jess] (5:28 - 5:31)

No. I've used it. I loved it.

It worked really well.

[Pinja] (5:32 - 5:46)

Exactly. For many organizations, it is what works and that's fine. But that cannot be the “Why”.

Like, why are you doing this transformation? Well, we need to get ourselves in the SAFe. No, we need to get some DevOps for us.

No. What do you want to achieve with that?

[Jess] (5:46 - 6:33)

Exactly. Exactly. And I think there's two parts of the why.

I think that gives you a clear target for what it is that you're trying to prove or disprove with your hypothesis. I think the other thing is, it starts to really force you to think about what you're actually measuring or what you will be measuring. Because the other thing is, you don't want to start making a change before you've got some sort of baseline.

You kind of need to know where you're at to know whether or not you're moving the needle in the right direction or not. And all too often we see a kind of a retrospective, suddenly, oh my goodness, we need to actually work out whether we've improved or not because we need to prove these numbers to the board or we need evidence that we are improving. And if you've never started to measure before you start applying change or making change, you kind of end up sort of justifying things that haven't got the real data backing it.

[Pinja] (6:33 - 7:10)

That's one of the first things that, when I've been doing transformations with customers, I often have that sort of kick off in the very beginning. We sat down with the management. There might be somebody who's a sponsor of that.

There might be our one point of contact. There might be a transmission lead from the customer side, but it has to be the other people from management who are caring about this, who are sponsoring this. And with them, we need to sit down and say, if we succeed, what does success look like from your perspective?

So that we actually have a goal and it's not just, let's get SAFe, let's get AI for us. And how do we measure that we actually got there? Yeah, yeah.

[Jess] (7:11 - 8:19)

And I think actually what you call out there a lot of times, I think, gets almost forgotten. There's this ground up evolution transformation desire, but unless you've got that advocate that's working for you at a senior leadership level, that is really flying the flag and saying, this is what good looks like. This is what we're aiming for.

Come on guys, I've got you. And they really kind of take the accountability for the overall shift or change. I think that creates a very kind of a much more holistic feeling for people to strive towards as well, because they don't feel like they're fighting an uphill battle.

They can see somebody that's kind of encouraging them. Yeah. But not always necessarily leading, not saying I'm going to tell you the route to take, but sometimes they're at the back of the pack going, yes, I believe in you going for it.

Sometimes they're in the middle of the pack, encouraging people and kind of making sure that things happen and that they don't kind of lose momentum. And sometimes they are at the front because difficult decisions need to be made, or it seems that actually we've got a fork in the road and we've got to go one direction, or we kind of just want to rally the troops a little bit, speed them up a little bit. And so I think about those different roles that that advocate and that senior person needs to play, that owner really, for the change.

[Pinja] (8:19 - 9:01)

Especially for a transformation as it is being driven by consultancy or externals, contractors. I've seen that if you don't have the buy-in from the management and the management doesn't show their leadership that we're on this path together, we're on the same path, we're doing the same changes, showing leadership is not going to stick because then it seems like, well, here's another external party coming in and telling us what to do. Oh, look at that.

We got some fancy slides. That's one of those things that if you're, it doesn't even matter if it's an internal party transforming your organisation or if you're using a third party, you need to show that leadership because otherwise people are not going to believe in it.

[Jess] (9:01 - 9:39)

Yeah, it's the age old, everyone loves change until it's happening to them. Yes. And so when change is happening to people or to individuals, you need to think about their needs in this.

And I know we talked about this off air, but I think that more often than not, when you go through these big change shifts, these transformational shifts, these evolutions, I think often it's easier to focus on the process and the tools than it is to focus on the people. And actually the only way that you're truly going to succeed and you're really going to get buy-in, adoption and kind of belief behind you is if the people are on that journey with you and they feel like they're part of it rather than that it's happening to them.

[Pinja] (9:39 - 10:08)

That makes it feel like they don't have agency to what is happening to them, as you say. And many people want the information in different formats. This is as simple as, let's say, having an all-hands meeting and having it written down, having it drawn out and amplifying that message.

Before off air, we were talking about what would be our greatest fear of reading about a transformation document and I think Word and Google Docs was our favourite thing to hate.

[Jess] (10:08 - 10:23)

Just a 200-page Google Doc would be the worst. But equally, you need to be able to convey a difficult and sometimes quite complex message in as simple terms as possible, which is also quite an art as well. Trying to do that is tough.

[Pinja] (10:24 - 10:53)

Yeah, that is not having a Google Docs or a 200-page Word document or PDF is not the way to do it. But you need to figure out what your audience is. Who are you leading through that transformation?

Is it towards growth? You want to keep up with the competition. You want better margins.

Yes, you want to keep up with innovation. But those are, I would say, if it's okay to say, what are the appropriate reasons, I would accept those or we just want SAFe, we just want AI or that the other folks are doing it right now.

[Jess] (10:53 - 14:17)

Or we're just trying to keep up with competition because that doesn't feel like it's giving you anything that you can really measure. I was thinking a little bit about what you said about, there's two things actually that you mentioned that I think are worth calling out. The idea that different people have different needs when it comes to communication style.

And I think this is something that is really close to my heart, actually. When I was working in a bank at the time, and when I was part of the kind of major transformation that they went through, one of the things I was really advocating for was the idea that we have multiple different mediums for the way in which we communicate what's happening. And so that might mean that we have an all hands meeting, it might mean that we have a pre recorded video that people can watch in their own time, it means that we would have a confluence page, or you know, it might be some SharePoint page, whatever it is that allows them to go and read and really understand what's happening, something visual that helps them as well.

And I think trying to meet people with the needs that they have around their communication style. And especially when you're talking about a big group of people, if you don't, you know, 50, 60, 100 people, three, four, 5000 people that you're trying to take through those changes, you need to try and find the way that you can hit as many of the audience as possible through those different mediums. And I think we often tend to lean on the one that matters most to us, rather than the one that actually, or the ones that need to be used collectively to help more and more people adopt what's going on.

There was also something I was thinking about in terms of agency. So you mentioned this and a really good example, actually, I worked with one of my colleagues, Christian from a previous life, he and I were really strong advocates for the idea that people should self organize. And we went through something as part of our transformation, which was a little bit scary.

We didn't know whether it would work out or not, but it actually really played well into building rapport, building kind of belief from the teams that were affected. So we had, I think, about 400 engineers that were all across our multiple solution trains, basically, multiple release trains, we said, right, we need to reorganize our teams in such a way that we can be less siloed in the work that they're doing, so that we had less dependencies across the delivery of the work being done. And so we kind of built out a structure of a skeleton of what we think that those kinds of the value stream, it wasn't really value streams, but essentially, that that's probably the right word that we can use here.

And we said, given those, this is the skeleton that we think is applicable. But let's not decide this team has to be made up of these six, seven people, or these four people, we said, right, first of all, let's do a big workshop, let's each of you decide, this feels like the train or the value stream or the kind of place where I think I can have the most impact. So not just where do I want to be?

Where are my friends, but where I feel I can have the most impact. And then we did another session where we went a little bit deeper. We said, okay, well, now that we've kind of got you in that grouping, that team of team, which is the team that you feel that you can contribute the most to that you feel that you can either help others along that you've got really good experience in or that you can actually cross kind of collaborate and learn something new.

And we were amazed at just how much giving them that agency to self-select where they end up working had such a massive positive impact upon how they worked with us, their belief in their team, the way in which they've kind of they go through the like norming, storing, performing cycle. And I mean, a big part of that was that we got senior leadership buy-in to be able to give them that agency. And that was so important, but it really paid off.

And I think it had a really big impact on how we succeeded communicating change with the teams. That was a bit of a side quest, sorry, but I thought it was just interesting.

[Pinja] (14:18 - 15:21)

No, but this is what we are transforming. That's the question. What are we transforming?

We're also transforming the culture, right? If you haven't had that agency before, and now you give that choice, it might actually be really scary for people. Like, am I actually allowed to make my own decision here?

Like, do I have the agency here? Yeah, exactly. If it hasn't been there before.

But if we go back to the why, and if you don't have the why, you cannot communicate to the team. If you don't track where you're going, you don't have your metrics, and your why gets really hazy once again. And now tying that back to the communication, if you cannot actually convey to the people, like, this is where we're going, and we have achieved 85% of our goal, whatever it is, is that 85% of the SAFe implementation, feels really weird to say.

But let's just give you an example that you have those milestones that you're trying to achieve, but you need to have the why. You need to have the actual metrics. What does it look like when you succeed, when you've reached that why of yours?

[Jess] (15:21 - 15:56)

And do you know what? I think a lot of times people try to navigate transformation without, or big changes, without actually relying on stuff that exists, that's out there, that's really reliable. I mean, choose a change model to help you when you're going through something like this.

I mean, the Kotter model is a good example where actually, it helps you without any specific call-outs for what you're trying to achieve specifically, but it gives you key steps that you can follow that allows you to then help people along that journey. I mean, there are other models out there, but it's just one of the examples that I think is helpful to think through and is agnostic in terms of what you're trying to do.

[Pinja] (15:56 - 16:02)

So there's no need to reinvent the wheel in that way. There's so many best practices.

[Jess] (16:02 - 16:05)

Funny enough, people have already made those mistakes. You can learn from them.

[Pinja] (16:05 - 17:06)

That is actually the best way of learning. There has been a study about what do you learn the best from? Is it doing well on the first try?

I can tell you that it's not. How about the success stories? Uh-uh.

How about making your own mistakes? That's a little bit better, but you learn better from others' mistakes than your own, like hearing about that. And that's why you need to really...

You've got a slightly more objective view of it, right? Exactly. And that's why we need to read about those stories.

Why didn't that organization succeed? Why didn't they do this? So we've been talking about why we are transforming?

How are we transforming? So let's go to the what. What is actually transforming when we go through a transformation?

When we were planning this episode with Jess, we were talking about there being multiple elements here. And when you go through a transformation, you change one or more of these things that we talk about next. So how do you make decisions?

That's one of those things that can and is very likely to change. So who is making it? How quickly?

Based on what information? So that's one of those big elements that needs to be considered. It's gonna be changed.

Be prepared for that.

[Jess] (17:06 - 18:40)

And I think that's actually one of the things that's really difficult for a lot of very typical organizations to get their heads around. I mean, in the 80s and 90s, and probably the noughties as well, there was very much a top-down decision-making environment where the bosses called the shots. And I think more and more now where we are kind of in our evolution as human beings, is that we realize that there's probably much smarter people that exist in roles that are beneath us in a hierarchy, let's say.

I don't like to think of it too much that way. And therefore, I think let's rely on who's got their kind of hand on reality, the finger on the pulse. What's the data that's helping us make those decisions?

And less on the, well, I'm in this see-something role, therefore I get to decide this. And sure, there's some decisions around an organization that need to be made by those senior leaders or by whoever, but actually delegating wherever possible on some of the decisions that don't need to be as high up as they are is really important. And one kind of advice I would kind of give around that is, it's okay to delegate decision-making, but give people a boundary to work within and say, here's your playground.

Whatever happens within that playground is up to you. You can decide. If it goes outside of those kinds of boundaries and those rules, bring me in.

I'm happy to help kind of talk through it with you. Let's look at some of the data. We can maybe take it to whatever the board might be or the discussion forum or the decision forum.

But yeah, I mean, I think historically we've ended up in a space where the most senior people get to make decisions regardless of whether they've actually got the knowledge and the information that they need to.

[Pinja] (18:41 - 19:09)

Luckily, nowadays, we and many organizations are actually thinking that the decisions should be made closest to that place where that has the best knowledge about this, which actually gets us to the next point, which is information. That is very likely to change, especially in this day and age when we cannot avoid talking about AI so much. So is it access?

Is it transparent? Can people find it? Those are the questions that you need to think about.

And unfortunately, you need to be comfortable or just accept the fact that this is going to change.

[Jess] (19:10 - 20:11)

Yeah, this is a really tough one because I think there's two very different angles on this, which is one, there's some information that actually needs to be maintained in the hands of the right people. And there's some information that should be far more transparent and readily available. And I think in each organization, that's going to look slightly different.

I mean, if you work in a space where mergers and acquisitions are really kind of front and centre of what you do, there's going to be a lot more stuff that's behind closed doors by nature of the business. And I think if you're working more in, you know, there's some companies that actually have quite heavy secrecy things that are going on. I think Apple's a good example where, you know, secrecy is quite important to them.

Even internally, they're very restricted around who can know what, and it's part of their selling point. So I think understanding for each organisation, what is the appropriate level of visibility of information, and by default, assuming that most things should be transparent, I think is a good place to start rather than the opposite way around, which I think is kind of what we've seen previously, which is everything's private until it needs to be made public. And yeah, that's hard.

[Pinja] (20:12 - 20:53)

I fully agree. There needs to be some information that is on a need-to-know basis. It's obviously like GDPR related issues.

There's, as you say, mergers and acquisitions. But this is something that the need to look into how we deal with data has become maybe more visible to us and more significant because of AI and because of the use of AI tools. We need to be more diligent in actually looking into why this is confidential?

Why is this internal, this information here? Who should have access to that? Why don't we actually allow this information?

Because the use of AI tools will make it easier. So why is it not available to the AI tools?

[Jess] (20:53 - 21:03)

And the absolute worst argument is because we've always done it that way. And that gives me the horrible kind of goosebumps when people say that. I'm like, no, that's not a good reason.

[Pinja] (21:04 - 21:47)

No, best I've heard is that, this was in the 2010s. Somebody told me when I was trying to propose in a previous job that, hey, should we do this differently? And I said, I got, well, we tried it in the 80s and it didn't work.

Things have changed somewhat since then. Yes, luckily. Luckily.

One really key thing that is about to change when you do a transformation, this is something we, when we're applying this, which is, this is something we need, feel that very strongly about that this needs to change, is the incentives. When you're trying to get new behaviour to pick up and stuck, stick into an organisation and, well, you need to figure out what gets rewarded in that kind of organisation.

[Jess] (21:47 - 22:52)

Yeah. And this is a really interesting one because I think ultimately what you're trying to achieve when you're going through some sort of change or some sort of major transformation is that you want behaviours to shift in the direction that you're moving in. And if you consistently stick with old incentive models and ways to encourage your people, whether that's monetary, whether that's praise driven, whatever the incentive might be, promotional, whatever those things are, if you continue to reward the behaviour that isn't driving you in the direction that you want to be moving in, you're not going to see the behavioural change that you want to see.

So I think the biggest shift you can think about is when you are trying to change the direction or you're trying to push people towards something new and you really want them to be driving towards that, reward them for behaviours that help you get there. And that might mean that you have to kill some of your darlings. Yes.

It might mean that you have to rethink some of your ways of working and it may mean that you have to scrap stuff that you thought worked well previously. And that's okay. But I think, really thinking about that incentive mechanism is key.

[Pinja] (22:53 - 23:15)

I'm really thinking. I'm really having a hard time thinking. How could I motivate, for example, my team to work in a new way if we still praise them for the old behaviour, which we're trying to kill at the time?

Does it really matter what we incentivise for if it's actually in line with whatever we want to achieve? That's one maybe philosophical question around this.

[Jess] (23:15 - 24:09)

No, I don't think it does. I think worrying too much about what you're incentivising for isn't the right thing to consider. I think it is about, on your hypothesis of where you want to go, that top of the mountain view, what will be good indicators that you're moving in the right direction?

And then asking yourself, how do we encourage people to want to reach those milestone steps, those key spaces? And as long as you are incentivising, in any way possible, them to get there and them to reach that, I think that's what's most important. And those incentivisations might change over time as well.

That's also okay. In the same way that your path might change over time, because at some point, you might need to take a look and say, to know what, this is actually not, we're not proving our hypothesis at all. We're actually seeing that the exact opposite is happening.

You've got to be able to pivot. And so I think being able to move your incentive model, whatever that is, in line with that pivot is, yeah, really important.

[Pinja] (24:09 - 24:39)

That's true. And let's go to the next one, because this is something that I think influences the decision part and the changes in decisions and the incentive as well. So let's look at the structure a little bit.

So we're not just talking about the whole organisational structure. We're talking about the teams. It might be the funding.

It might be the governance structure. So again, decisions, who's making those, with what cadence, and reporting lines. And yeah, with old ways and old structures, you might get the old habits back.

[Jess] (24:39 - 25:56)

Yeah. And there's a really fine balance here, because I think transformations as a whole don't mean that you have to rip everything up and start all over. And I think, especially with something like a waterfall to agile type transformation, we saw so many organisations kind of flatten everything that they already had and start from the bottom up.

And I think that you don't always need to be doing that. I think in some ways that does help. It can create a clean slate.

And I think you have to be really kind of mindful about when that is the appropriate tactic to take. But I think in other ways, thinking more about your incremental changes, you know, have you got a governance model, for example, that is encouraging people to still think about this in a very waterfall manner? You're going through stage gauge controls rather than, you know, thinking about that fast feedback loop you talked about earlier, you know, being able to fail and learn from it very quickly, whether that's our own failings or other people's failings is probably the wrong learning curve.

Learning curves, yes. But being able to actually navigate those is a far more healthy thing than, oh, well, let's wait till it gets to this governance forum and be shot down. And so I think organisations need to consider what controls, compliance practices, mechanisms do they need to have in place?

And what actually maybe needs to be redesigned to help navigate what they're actually trying to aim for?

[Pinja] (25:56 - 26:36)

Yeah, the structures, we don't need to, again, with this one, we do not need to reinvent the wheel and the existing structures might work, but there might be some changes. And it might be that the team structure is okay. If we see that it actually works and it's serving the purpose towards that why of ours, maybe the reporting lines are fine.

Maybe the governance might need some changes because it's, again, those incentives and decision-making patterns of that organisation might need to be revised. But don't uproot everything just for the sake of it. If you need to, then by all means, but just that needs to be evaluated really carefully.

[Jess] (26:36 - 28:24)

I mean, I think the vital thing here is actually just being considered about whether or not you need to uproot things. And the answer might be yes. The answer might be no.

The answer might be somewhere in between. And we sort of see this a little bit, I think, now with some more AI-led kind of transformational behaviour, we typically see that organisations try to just throw AI on top of what they're already doing. And if you're thinking about that at an individual level, that may work.

You're kind of using it to help you in your day-to-day life. But if you really want to change the way that your organisation's set out and you really want to move into that AI-native space, it's not about retrofitting what you do and hoping that it stands the course of time. It's actually where redesign is more appropriate.

But I think that the important thing is questioning, is this the right application of that? And in AI's case, is this actually something that we want to be using AI for? And if so, do we need to optimize it for a human slash AI thinking rather than a human-centric thinking or even a pure AI agent-led kind of thinking?

And it's not a simple yes, no, maybe answer. It is, you need to take each of those items and consider what is the right path for us here. And the consideration is the key piece.

And involve people in making that call because two heads are always better than one, right? And I think you've got to keep in touch with what's happening. And that's kind of the same as what we talked about earlier in terms of the decision making.

You need to be making informed decisions and therefore bringing people in early and bringing those champions in and bringing the laggards even that we talk about. I don't really like to think of them as laggards so much as critical thinking. You've got to take that into consider, you know, not everyone's going to run and jump into the pool behind you.

You kind of need to think about the consequences too.

[Pinja] (28:24 - 29:22)

And that's one of the first things I often do when we start a transformation with an organisation is that I usually spot those people. They're sitting in the back of the room during the kickoff with their arms folded and looking really cranky. And I'm like, okay, I need to go and talk to those people.

It's not like I want to be converting them to believe in this cause. Obviously, at some point, you'd hope. Yes, that would be nice.

But what I would like to do is like, why is that like that? Why do you feel like that? Is it because we're externals?

Is it because you tried this in the 80s and it didn't work? Is it something that you're worried about that we're going to touch some really crucial part of your organisation and you're scared that we're going to just wipe the floor with it? So don't change for the sake of change.

And we talked about FOMO before, right? It's kind of on the same line, right? Just because we can doesn't mean it should.

Yeah.

[Jess] (29:22 - 30:32)

Yeah. I mean, with that kind of character, I think it's really important that you establish pretty quickly whether they are someone who can, like you say, it's not about conversion. I think it's about whether someone who's got a valid and valuable opinion that actually really does need to be considered.

And sometimes it's going to be someone who really all they want to know is what's in it for me or how does this impact me? And if they can get their head around that, they're actually really powerful advocates for you to then have on board. Equally, you've got some people who kind of just like to play devil's advocate.

They like to be the difficult person in the room. And it's OK and important to give those people some level of airtime, but don't give it all to them. And so, you know, it's easier said than done.

But I think understanding the characters in your room, whatever that room is, and knowing how to use them to create your strength in it. I almost like to think of it as like a spider's web. You've got lots of different people that are at different points of the spider's web.

And, you know, as long as collectively your team is really good at holding that in a good shape, that's what matters. You don't have to have everybody capable of doing everything. And it's the same thing with opinions.

You kind of need that critical mind, that slight devil's advocate to then challenge at times.

[Pinja] (30:32 - 31:08)

We need that radical candor, to be honest, in these situations. We have one thing left of our things that I'd like to change. And this is actually when we talk about transformations in our line of business, this is usually the thing that gets talked about the most.

So technology, that is one of the most obvious ones here. And Jess and I, we're not in our technology part of our business. We're usually talking about day-to-day life, we talk about people and business transformation.

But we cannot, of course, not talk about technology. This is usually the enabler, but not exactly the transformation itself.

[Jess] (31:08 - 32:37)

Yeah. I mean, I wear a secondary hat, I suppose, in some of this, because I also cover a lot of the Atlassian space at Eficode. However, one thing that I'm very clear to with customers and with partners that we work with is that the tool is never the driving factor.

It should never be the why. So, you know, whether you're adopting Jira or GitHub or whatever the partnership or the tool might be, you'd need to be thinking about how you use that tool as an enabler rather than simply the driver behind everything. I've been on the receiving end of this when I was working in the bank, actually, where we saw that using the right tools can seriously improve and amplify what you're able to do.

And it is a massive win. However, those tools are not, unless you're using them in a way that moves your people in the direction, it's the same with the incentives, right? Unless you're using them in a way that moves the people in the right direction, you know, you're just paying for a bunch of licenses that actually aren't going to have the impact that you're hoping for.

And so I think first and foremost, understand what problem it is that you're trying to solve, work out what it is that's broken or that needs some level of attention, and then understand what good looks like. And then you can start to think about how you take your people along that journey, how you start to, you know, redesign or kind of rethink some of your processes that might need to be thought about. And then you think about the tool and you think about the tool as that underlying support mechanism for whatever it is that you're going through, rather than the front of the train driving things forward.

[Pinja] (32:38 - 32:58)

So we've been talking about the why, we talked about the how, and now we talked about what we are transforming and what it's like to transform. So maybe if we sum this up a little bit, we talked about the measuring, but maybe one thing we did not exactly talk about was understanding the fundamental hurdles that we might get along the way. So maybe that's one of the, one part of the baseline that we need to figure out in the beginning.

[Jess] (32:59 - 33:55)

Yeah, I mean, I think pre-empting and being mindful of what hurdles might come your way is not, you know, it might be considered like doom thinking, but it's not. It's actually just, you know, I'm going to go back to the mountain analogy again. If you can see that there's a portion of that mountain that's got this huge crevice that you're going to fall down, you find ways to mitigate that.

And I think it's the same principle when, you know, if you've got hurdles that you think might be a challenge, whether that's something that you can see going to be changing in the market, whether that's a new regulation that's going to hit you, whether that's that you know that there's going to be some sort of shift in your organisation, whether you're being bought out or, you know, you might be going IPO or any of those things, learning how to navigate that as part of the journey will help you make sure that you're not driving too far off course when you actually start moving. And assuming that you're not going to come across hurdles is an absolute fool's dream because there's always going to be something that goes wrong.

[Pinja] (33:56 - 34:26)

There's the framework of you have the known knowns, you have the unknown knowns, and all of that. So basically there are unknown unknowns, right? And you need to have a strategy for what you do when you have when you encounter something like that during that transformation?

It was like, yes, we can mitigate a lot of risks, but we cannot mitigate all of that. But as you say, if we fool ourselves into saying that, la la la la la, there's nothing, nothing can come out of our way. We've preempted everything that we can, right?

So that's not, that's not happening.

[Jess] (34:26 - 35:32)

I see. So this is a slight side quest, but it kind of gives the context a little bit. I was watching some funny thing that was like a clip about these big house transformation shows, how these couples always go on the shows and they're like, yeah, we're going to build this house and we've got a budget of this much money and we're going to have it done in eight weeks.

And you know, the reality is, is that actually they find out that the plumbing's all broken or that, you know, there's no planning permission and they get turned down and then they have a kid and like all of these things happen. And it turns out that they end up spending seven times the amount that they planned to. It took them three years to get there.

And I think that this is the kind of fallacy of, well, I've got this plan and therefore we're going to stick to this plan. Plans are fine, but you also need to think about the fact that plans should and will change over time. And you need to be able to evolve with that.

And it needs to be an organic thing. Putting controls in place, having those milestone kind of points that help you navigate that, foreseeing hurdles before you hit them, allowing contingency for the unknown unknowns is the bit that always gets thrown off the, off the bottom first for some reason. It's like, oh no, we don't need to worry about that.

That's not going to happen. Let's remove the contingency.

[Pinja] (35:33 - 35:43)

Let's forget about the, the fact that we need some kind of licensing for renovating this house. I love it that this just became an ad for Love It or List It.

[Jess] (35:43 - 35:46)

I was thinking of Grand Designs, but yeah, sure. Let's go. 

[Pinja] (35:46 - 35:48)

Something like Grand Designs, another great show.

[Jess] (35:48 - 35:50)

Yeah. Many more are out there. 

[Pinja] (35:50 - 35:58)

I think that's all the time we have.

That's all the time we have for talking about transformations today. Jess, thank you so much for joining me today. I had a blast.

[Jess] (35:58 - 35:59)

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. 

[Pinja] (35:59 - 36:09)

Hey, thank you everybody for tuning in and we'll see you in the Sauna next time.

We'll now tell you a little bit about who we are.

[Jess] (36:09 - 36:35)

Hi, my name's Jess Fraser-Darling and I'm the People and Business Transformation Lead here at Eficode. I have a background in transformation myself. I've been working in financial services and banking across Europe, the UK, and then moved to Sweden some years ago.

And transformations are kind of part and parcel of what I love to talk about, what I love to do. Seeing how people are impacted is actually the most interesting part of that. So I'm looking forward to sharing some thoughts with Pinja today on the pod.

[Pinja] (36:35 - 36:42)

I'm Pinja Kujala. I specialize in agile and portfolio management topics at Eficode. Thanks for tuning in.

We'll catch you next time.