The Transformation Prophet

She was hired to transform the organization. This was stated clearly in her title, which contains the word transformation, and in her mandate, which was given by a CEO who had returned from a conference feeling the specific urgency that conferences are designed to produce.

She built a roadmap. The roadmap had phases. Phase One was Assessment. Phase Two was Foundation. Phase Three was Scale. The phases had colors. The roadmap was presented to the board and the board approved it and the transformation began.

Eighteen months later the dashboards are new. The platform has been modernized. The team has been reorganized twice and the org chart, which no one fully understands, has been posted to Confluence where it will age quietly until the next reorganization.

The decisions are the same.

The Transformation Prophet is not incompetent. She is operating under a fundamental misunderstanding that the organization shares and that no one has named: that transformation is a thing that can be done to an organization rather than a change in how the organization makes decisions. You cannot transform toward something you have not defined. You cannot build a foundation without knowing what the structure above it is supposed to hold.

She needed Step One. She was never given the room to run it.

The church does not blame her.

The church blames the skip.

It is always the skip.