Get Off the Transformation Treadmill

Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles carefully curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since 2017 |  Week 432, covering December 19-25, 2025 | Archive

Get Off the Transformation Treadmill

By Darrell Rigby and Zach First | Harvard Business Review Magazine | January–February 2026

3 key takeaways from the article

1. A satirical article in the Onion titled “CEO Unveils Bold New Plan To Undo Damage From Last Year’s Bold New Plan” parodied the serial transformations that occur at many corporations.  the The authors claim that they don’t claim that transformations are never necessary.  However, the authors’ experience with hundreds of successful and unsuccessful change programs suggests that the best way to manage transformations is to minimize the need for them.
2. Four practical actions to cultivate that kind of self-renewing system.  A) Master Systems Management – adapt your entire business system to thrive in dynamic environments.  B) Detect Emerging Realities Before Transformations Become the Only Options.  C)  Increase Agility to Keep Problems Small.  And D) Grow Value—Don’t Just Shift It from One Stakeholder Group to Another.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics: Strategy, Transformation, Agility, System Management

Extractive Summary of the Article | Read | Listen

A satirical article in the Onion titled “CEO Unveils Bold New Plan To Undo Damage From Last Year’s Bold New Plan” parodied the serial transformations that occur at many corporations. Leaders often blame uncontrollable factors—policies of previous administrations, hiring for a boom that fizzled unexpectedly, macroeconomic uncertainty, the rise of artificial intelligence—but all too often the real strategic issues go unaddressed. Rather than revitalizing the organization, the constant shake-ups breed change fatigue that drains employee morale. Customers and suppliers, uncertain which strategies will survive next year’s pivot, grow wary of long-term partnerships. Investors fear greater risk and discount future earnings. Leadership’s time and financial resources flow to organizational cleanups and restructuring charges instead of innovation and value creation.

According to the author they don’t claim that transformations are never necessary.  However, our experience with hundreds of successful and unsuccessful change programs suggests that the best way to manage transformations is to minimize the need for them.  Based on their work and research the authors explore how to continuously strengthen the business through steady, integrated strategic adjustments—so that progress compounds naturally and the need for future upheavals declines.  Four practical actions to cultivate that kind of self-renewing system.

Master Systems Management.  Similar to other complex living systems, businesses constantly contend with unpredictable forces that favor the fittest and most adaptable competitors. Our research finds that successful business leaders are masterful systems managers. Whether or not they use that term, they adapt their entire business system to thrive in dynamic environments. They optimize the performance of the whole rather than focusing on individual pieces in isolation, understanding that the total value of a company isn’t just the sum of its parts, it’s also the value of the synergistic relationships among those parts. These leaders respect uncertainty and talk in terms of scenarios and probabilities rather than indisputable predictions. They regularly conduct experiments to expose their ideas and strategies to low-risk reality checks. They relentlessly update information, and when new data invalidates a prior assumption, they revise the assumption rather than protecting egos. Skillful systems managers embrace disagreement as a sign of engagement, not disloyalty. They turn the entire organization into a self-correcting organism: one that can navigate shocks and opportunities faster and better than its disjointed rivals can.

Detect Emerging Realities Before Transformations Become the Only Options.  An old saying advises that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But in complex systems—including physical and mental health, personal relationships, cybersecurity, and companies—when something is broken, we tend to neglect it for far too long. Hoping that “it’s probably nothing,” we accumulate intangible liabilities that typically come due at the worst possible times.  A company needs superb market intelligence to detect meaningful signals in a world of noise and misinformation. All too often corporate dashboards fail to foresee problems, because they’re dominated by lagging indicators that confirm damage only after the fact.  A mix of rearview measurement, corrupted incentives, and wishful thinking blinds organizations to compounding risks and subjects them to chronic transformations.  Effective measurement minimizes transformations by working as a learning system, not a “gotcha” report card. It relies on metrics designed with—not for—the people who will use them to run the business. Each benchmark is stress tested by its creators’ asking, “Could someone hit this target yet undermine our mission?” If so, the measure is paired with counter-metrics or qualitative checks that close potential loopholes.

Increase Agility to Keep Problems Small.  Business agility is a critical capability for turning unexpected disruptions into valuable strategies. Agile organizations thrive in dynamic environments by fostering aligned autonomy—empowering multidisciplinary teams closest to the work to act on real-time information and make decisions swiftly. They are free from bureaucratic micromanagement but firmly anchored in the organization’s shared purpose. This balance ensures innovation remains coordinated and coherent, channeling creativity into collective value rather than chaotic inefficiency. By continually capturing insights across the enterprise and rapidly translating them into integrated actions, agile organizations convert uncertainty into opportunity and deliver sustained performance gains.

Grow Value—Don’t Just Shift It from One Stakeholder Group to Another.  Transformations are often desperate responses to angry stakeholders. Under heavy pressure and tight deadlines, executives resort to quick-fix change initiatives that simply shift value from passive stakeholders to the most vocal and aggressive ones. While this may buy temporary peace, it does nothing to address the root problem. Instead, it perpetuates a destructive cycle. Once-docile stakeholders, now feeling exploited, retaliate even harder—escalating conflicts and ultimately eroding long-term value.  Continually increasing the amount of alignment, synergy, and value creation among team members is the only way to avoid or escape this trap. Long-term value creation should not be a zero-sum game. It thrives on collaboration, not conflict. It is especially valuable during crises, when people tend to shrink their social circles, reducing their collective problem-solving capacity. The ability to maintain and leverage expansive networks has long been a defining factor in human achievement. In business, systemwide value creation is the unifying force that holds a company together. Without it, profits erode and talent migrates to firms that offer greater value. A thriving organization sustains itself through building a cohesive business system that generates extraordinary value for both the company and its stakeholders.