Digital Transformation: A 30-Minute Intervention
Digital transformation is the most overused, misunderstood, and expensive term in the modern C-suite. Most leaders aren't transforming; they’re just buying 2025 technology to run a 1925 business model.
This is an intervention for senior leaders who confuse "digitisation" with "survival."
1. The Amoskeag Trap: Modernisation vs. Transformation
In 1810, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was a textile titan with 17,000 employees and 30 mills. When electricity arrived, they "modernised." They swapped water wheels for electric motors but kept the same products, the same customers, and the same broken processes. By the 1930s, they were bankrupt.
Most firms today are the modern Amoskeag. They move to the cloud, hire a Chief AI Officer, and call it transformation. It’s not. It’s just "Random Acts of Digital."
- Modernisation: Doing the same thing, just slightly faster.
- True Transformation: The deliberate strategic repositioning of your business in the digital economy. It is a change in where you play and how you win.
2. Strategy is War, Not a To-Do List
Stop calling your sequence of plans a "strategy." A plan has a defined, low-risk outcome—like migrating data or launching a website.
Strategy is a Greek term: the way of the leader in war.
Strategy is about risk.
It is about adventure.
It is about defining who you are going up against and how you plan to beat them to win the customer's loyalty.
If your "strategy" doesn't involve the possibility of failure or a fundamental shift in your value prop, you don't have a strategy. You have a project list.
3. The Tolstoy Tax: Why Transformations Fail
Leo Tolstoy said everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves.
Transformation is a political process, not a technical one. If your C-suite hasn’t dedicated a full week to education and self-improvement, they aren’t serious about change. They are just LARPing innovation.
Education is the cornerstone. Without it, the "antibodies" of the old business model will kill any new strategy before it hits the market.
4. AI: The Strategy Force Multiplier
Generative AI is the new electricity. It isn’t just for writing emails; it’s for speeding up the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) of leadership.
AI models can now deconstruct hypotheses and identify the Riskiest Assumption in minutes—a process that used to take weeks of debate and ego-bruising.
5. The Case of Gareth Walsh: From Commodity to Product
Gareth Walsh, CEO of a mid-sized engineering firm, fell for the "Industry 4.0" hype. He automated his shop floor, but his business stayed stagnant. Why? Because automation is operational, not strategic.
To win, Gareth had to follow three waves:
- Industry Change: Climate change and flood risks.
- Technical Change: AI, IoT, and predictive modelling.
- Customer Pain: The unmet need for mobile sea defences.
6. The Bottom Line: Humility is Alpha
The ultimate competitive advantage for a senior leader is a "large cup of humility." Gareth’s breakthrough didn't come from a 50-page PowerPoint; it came from signalling to his team that he didn't know the answer.
The Playbook:
- Use AI to build "brochures of the future."
- Test them with customers immediately.
- Don't build the product until you’ve validated the market pain.
In the era of AI, the winners won't be the ones with the best technology, but the ones with the best questions and the fastest learning cycles.
The choice is yours: Transform or become a footnote in the Amoskeag history book.