The Ability to Transform Is a Decisive Competitive Advantage in Dynamic Markets

Companies must continually change to meet customer demand and stay competitive. Transformation programs are part of every corporate agenda. Yet despite their high relevance, these programs often fail and don't deliver the intended impact. They get launched, budgets are approved and spent, teams work with great energy—but in the end, the results often fall short of expectations. At the same time, day-to-day operations have to keep running. Jana Müller, Head of Practice Division Transformation of Business, knows these patterns well. In this conversation, she explains why transformation so often stalls, what agility alone can't solve, and why companies need to manage change differently.

CS: Jana, companies invest heavily in transformation. Yet the impact often falls short of expectations. In your experience, why is that?

Jana Müller: The vision and the corresponding strategy often aren't the problem—provided they focus on areas where they can have a tangible effect on business success, in other words, where value can be created. In many companies, it's fairly clear where they want to go, or even where they have to go.

The real challenge often lies in reconciling sound strategies with the individual realities of a company, and in building and sustaining buy-in across the organization. To do that, the strategy, goals, value drivers, and priorities all need to be clear and translated into operational decisions. People want to understand and help shape the direction; when decisions are made for them instead of with them, and when goals aren't clear enough, energy is lost—and with it, impact. Transformation inertia and employee resistance are common reasons why transformations fail.

Between the target vision and day-to-day operations, organizations often lack the ability to realistically assess the scale of change required and the organization's capacity to adapt, as well as to continuously respond to shifting conditions. Equally, it's often underestimated how important it is—beyond setting clear goals—to structure transformation initiatives appropriately within the organization, plan them carefully, and manage them professionally. This is where many initiatives stall. Not because of missing or poor ideas about the company's future direction, but because translating those ideas into the company's concrete reality and managing implementation alongside day-to-day business doesn't succeed well enough.

CS: Why does this happen so often—are companies doing something fundamentally wrong?

Jana Müller: Many companies still treat transformations like a traditional project or program—with a beginning, an end, a clearly defined scope, and the assumption of stable conditions. But that's not what reality looks like. Within companies, multiple initiatives are intertwined, priorities shift, new requirements emerge, and conditions change. Clean project plans, experienced project managers, and elaborate capacity planning alone are no longer enough to handle this. What's missing is a robust implementation and governance logic that views these initiatives within the company's overall context.

CS: What does that mean in concrete terms?

Jana Müller: Company leadership needs to keep the goal clearly in sight, communicate the change credibly, and lead by example. At the same time, they have to manage the entire transformation portfolio, set priorities, and quickly course-correct when needed. Because transformation only succeeds when goals are translated into the organization and initiatives are consistently aligned with one another—despite dependencies, limited capacity, and competing budgets.

CS: So is this more of a structural issue than a methodological one?

Jana Müller: Yes, absolutely. Many companies today work with good methods and have launched the right initiatives. The problem tends to arise where everything has to come together. That's why many organizations initially believe they have an execution problem. But that diagnosis often falls short. In reality, what's usually missing is the ability to manage change across the board and align it consistently. Transformation often fails not because of individual teams or ideas, but because changes at the organizational level are no longer brought together cleanly and aligned consistently with the strategy. In many cases, external support is needed to build this capability.

CS: How does this gap between strategy and execution show up in practice?

Jana Müller: The key aspects are translating the strategy into actionable initiatives and managing them along the way. On paper, much of it looks coherent at first. In most cases, there are target visions, roadmaps, and clearly defined initiatives. In reality, though, things often look different. Conditions change without it being clear how this affects ongoing initiatives; decisions take longer than planned or aren't made at all. Coordination efforts increase, and teams set their own priorities, which means they unintentionally end up working in different directions. That's exactly what eventually pushes many organizations to their limits. And it's not uncommon for the question to arise then whether the initiative should have been set up differently from the start.

CS: Many companies are betting heavily on agility. Isn't that the answer to dynamic times?

Jana Müller: Agility definitely helps. But applying it only in isolated areas isn't enough here. Agile teams can respond to change faster, make decisions closer to day-to-day operations, and implement initiatives more flexibly—that's a good thing. The problem in companies begins where many changes are happening at the same time—and this is exactly where agility can show its full effect. In practice, we often see the following: individual teams work very well, initiatives are set up sensibly, and yet, in the end, the shared direction is missing. Then things happen in many places, but not necessarily what matters most for the company as a whole at that moment.

By introducing scaled agility, companies extend agile ways of working to multiple teams, divisions, or even the entire organization, making an important contribution to better governance across the organization as a whole. This brings them a big step closer to the goal of improving their overall transformational capability. Because ultimately, transformational capability is what determines how changes are jointly managed and aligned across teams, divisions, and initiatives.

CS: What does it actually look like in companies when this capability is missing?

Jana Müller: The system becomes overwhelmed and loses direction, and change turns into constant stress. Teams work on an ever-growing number of new topics at the same time, priorities are set independently and shift constantly, and decisions drag on or aren't made at all. Communication overhead rises, a lot of energy goes into coordination instead of execution, and the conversation revolves around problems rather than their solutions. From the outside, this often looks like a high level of activity. Internally, however, frustration takes over: employees lose motivation, get sick, or quit. The corporate culture suffers, and customers often leave. As a result, companies lose their operational stability—which is critically important for handling both day-to-day business and new challenges.

CS: What do companies where transformation works better do differently?

Jana Müller: They accept reality, don't treat transformation as a state of emergency, and work continuously to improve their transformational capability. There, change—whether driven by new conditions or by internal initiatives—is a natural part of day-to-day business.

That's why these companies invest not only in individual initiatives, but also in their ability to bring change together more effectively as a whole. They communicate their vision and strategy clearly across the entire organization. They're honest with themselves, assess their transformational capability realistically, and factor that assessment into how they plan their initiatives.

At the same time, they look at their entire portfolio and align it consistently with the strategy. They analyze dependencies and chains of impact, turn them into clear priorities, and communicate these transparently. On this basis, decisions are made that gain acceptance and are then followed through consistently in action. Beyond that, they make dependencies visible and reach decisions faster and more decisively. These companies make wrong decisions too. The difference, though, is that they learn from them.

They put people at the center and work in a way that fosters a culture grounded in shared values—one that gives everyone a sense of direction. This culture is characterized by a strong willingness to learn and by leadership that builds trust rather than fear.

CS: Many people would probably say now: this sounds like more processes and more governance. Doesn't that actually make a company slower?

Jana Müller: A lot of people are wary of that at first. But that's not really the point. Often, organizations aren't slowed down by too much governance, but by unclear decision-making paths, unclear priorities, and a lack of conflict resolution. When that clarity is missing, unwanted friction arises. Good governance therefore doesn't create more bureaucracy—it creates direction and the ability to act, and with that, speed.

CS: So has the ability to transform become a core competency in itself?

Jana Müller: Yes, absolutely. In fact, the ability to deal with change, organize it well, and drive it forward with combined efforts is increasingly becoming a central competency for companies. The good news is: transformation competency grows with every successful change, and it can also be supported through targeted organizational development programs, for example. Companies with strong transformational capability can adapt to changing conditions faster, implement change more effectively, and thereby strengthen their efficiency, innovative power, and long-term viability.

CS: What does that mean concretely for companies? What would they need to do differently?

Jana Müller: Many companies react to problems reflexively with the next program or the next initiative. Yet often what's missing isn't another initiative, but the ability to bring the changes already underway together in a meaningful way and steer them toward the desired outcome.

That's why companies should initially focus less on new initiatives and instead assess their own transformational capability. How well do they currently manage to set priorities, make dependencies visible, reach decisions, and steer change across the board? The answers to these questions usually reveal very quickly where the greatest leverage lies.

What's decisive isn't just what companies want to change, but whether they can actually steer change effectively under real-world conditions. And that's exactly what their competitiveness will hinge on going forward.