7/31/23, 1:06 PM Section One: Creating the Transformation Roadmap | Rewired

Section One
Creating the
Transformation
Roadmap
A business-led roadmap is the blueprint for a
successful digital and AI transformation

When evaluating stalled digital and AI transformations, we find that

many of the issues can be traced back to insufficient planning and
alignment.1 Misunderstanding among leadership at the strategic planning
stage will invariably lead to muddled execution in your digital and AI
transformation.

We typically see five serious sins: leaders have a different conceptual un-
derstanding of digital so they talk past each other; leaders focus energies
on pet projects that don't deliver much value; they focus too much on
technology solutions, and miss the crucial people and capability needs;
the transformation is scoped too broadly so investments are spread too
thin; and, lastly, the CEO delegates responsibility to another executive in
the C-suite.2

If one of these issues is afflicting your company, call a timeout. No matter

where a business is on its transformation journey, it's never too late to re-

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set. By clarifying what you want to achieve and aligning around a plan to
do it, you can create tremendous excitement and conviction about the
journey ahead. The following chapters will guide you on how to develop a
roadmap and establish a strong foundation for your digital
transformation:

Chapter 1: Get your top team inspired and aligned. Take the time to
establish a common digital language, learn from other industries, de-
velop a shared vision, and explicitly agree on a set of commitments
that match your ambitions.
Chapter 2: Choose the right transformation “bite size.” The root
cause of most struggling transformations is an inappropriately scoped
effort that is either too small to achieve meaningful impact or too big
and complex to deliver.
Chapter 3: Have business leaders define what's possible. When
business leaders step up to define ambitious yet realistic transforma-
tion goals of their business domains, they set in motion the flywheel of
change.
Chapter 4: Figure out what resources you need to achieve what
you want. Agile pods are small, multidisciplinary teams tasked with
delivering the reimagined business. You need to figure out what kinds
and how many you need.
Chapter 5: Build capabilities for now and the next decade. You are
fundamentally upgrading the capabilities of your organization to out-
compete in the age of digital and AI. Be clear on what those capabili-
ties are and how to build them.
Chapter 6: The digital roadmap is a contract for your C-suite. It de-
tails specific plans to transform business domains with investments
and benefits. And it articulates a plan to build enterprise capabilities
with measurable maturity end-points.
Chapter 7: The ultimate corporate team sport. Every C-suite execu-
tive will need to do their part for the company to succeed on its digital
transformation journey.

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Notes

1.
1. Dennis Carey, Ram Charan, Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Rodney
Zemmel, “The CEO's playbook for a successful digital transformation,”
Harvard Business Review, December 20, 2021,
https://hbr.org/2021/12/the-ceos-playbook-for-a-successful-digital-
transformation; Celia Huber, Alex Sukharevsky, and Rodney Zemmel,
“5 questions boards should be asking about digital transformation,”
Harvard Business Review, June 21, 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/06/5-ques-
tions-boards-should-be-asking-about-digital-transformation.
2.
2. Jacques Bughin, Tanguy Catlin, Martin Hirt, and Paul Willmott, “Why
digital strategies fail,” McKinsey.com, January 25, 2018,
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-
insights/why-digital-strategies-fail.

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