Five questions boards should ask about transformation

Transformation programmes fail more often from weak oversight than from bad ideas. Boards are well placed to prevent this, provided they ask the right questions early and keep asking them.

The five questions

What, precisely, will be different for customers and employees when this succeeds? Which three metrics will tell us we are on track, and who owns each one? What are we stopping in order to make room for this? Where are the dependencies we do not control? And what would make us pause or change course?

Directors who return to these questions at every meeting give management both support and accountability, and they make it far more likely that the programme delivers what it promised.