What is a transformation and what is change? We can think about it like this. Change is making the system better, leading to incremental improvements. A transformation, on the other hand, is creating a new, better system, leading to significantly different outcomes. These concepts are not mutually exclusive. They intertwine, and companies today must be able to manage both. And with today's AI paradigm shift, the speed of which companies need to manage both change and transformation has never been as great. The unfortunate situation is, however, that most transformations fail. And today, we will explore why. Explore why. Every bridge begins with a gap. You know where you stand. You can see where you need to go. What you don't have yet is a way across. Transformation has the same starting point. The destination may be clear. A new strategy, a new technology, a new way of working. But knowing where you want to go doesn't mean people will come along with you. Ask yourself. Do you change just because the plan changes? We thought so. When we come under pressure, we return to what feels familiar, what feels safe. And that's when many transformations lose momentum. The strategy is signed off and the launch happens on time. But people carry on exactly as before. Many transformations fail the same way. The bridge gets built, but everyday behavior never makes it across. So, how do you get people across? Welcome to our Implement office in Malmö, Sweden. My name is Andreas. I'm a partner at Implement and I lead our Swedish commercial strategy and transformation practice. I have experienced transformation on both sides. Part of a line organization on the receiving end and since the past seven years leading commercial transformation across industries at Implement. And I'm Kristina, also a partner in our commercial strategy and transformation practice based on the other side of the bridge in Copenhagen. And today actually marks my ten years anniversary. So I experienced quite a few transformations and many of the challenges that we will be discussing today. So together Andreas and I will be your hosts. 22,000 projects from Oxford Global Projects and 30 years of experience tells us something worrying. Only 22% reach the impact they are set out to create. Oxford called this the Iron Law. 78% end up being over budget, over time, under benefit, over and over again. And there are of course many causes to this. But there is one factor that is always underestimated. And that is you. Well, not only you, but you and everyone in your organization and the fact that changing behavior is really hard. So we ask ourselves one question. Why is it so hard for people to change behavior? 66 days. Behind this number lies an uncomfortable truth about behavioral change. Research from University College London found that it takes a median of 66 days to make a new behavior stick, which is far longer than most implementation plans allows for. So why does it take so long? Because we work against our brain's design. Your brain makes up 2% of your body weight, but consumes 20% of your energy. So that's why the brain relies on habits. According to research from Duke, 40% of what we do every day is habitual. The brain prefers what it already knows. The result? When the new way feels harder than the old one, the old one will win. That is status quo bias, which means that under pressure we default to what feels familiar and safe. Yet most transformations, they don't take all these behavioral realities into account. And we see the same design flaws over again. Today we're going to explore four of them. And Andreas, he will take you through the first one. Thank you, Kristina. Who knew that we were going to speak about neuroscience and how much the brain waits today? But it makes a difference in how we design transformations. Because you typically design transformations around deliverables and implementation, not how long behavioral change actually takes. Across organizations, we see the same pattern. The design centers around the new systems, processes and tools, with a strong focus on the milestones and implementation plan. This happens while little attention is given to how people actually change and how long that will take. And behavioral science tells us that lasting change requires a habit loop. Cue, routine, reward. People need triggers for the new behavior. They need a routine to make it easier. And they need reward to make it stick. Yet these mechanisms are rarely built into the design of transformations. Let's take AI as an example. Most organizations today are rolling out licenses. They're building the new AI infrastructure and developing tools. But they're still struggle to turn the investment into growth. The technology arrived, but the new behaviors didn't. That's because the transformation is to get AI into the organization, not changing people's behavior and how they work with AI. And that's a common theme. Because most transformations are designed around the deliverables and the implementation, not around behavioral change. And if we move to the people that are involved in transformations, we see that companies often resource with the capacity they have, not with the capacity they need. When a transformation is staffed, the right people are named. The ones who know the organization can build a new system and act as ambassadors. But too often, they are the same people that an organization rely on to spearhead every initiative. So the transformation lands on a full calendar, competing with the targets they're already measured on. And busy people, they find it hard to change, let alone lead others to change. Research on scarcity shows that when time is narrow, our attention and focus is to what is most urgent. And a new behavior rarely is. It means being slower and less certain for a while, and a busy calendar doesn't leave room for that. And the managers who are meant to lead the change have the least time to do so. This is where trade-offs should come in, but very seldom do. And a transformation that costs nothing, changes nothing. So if the management and the leadership doesn't decide what gets dropped, the calendar will. You typically appoint sponsors to your transformations when it actually needs evangelists. Employees, they won't read your strategy. They watch what leaders consistently do. And when the signal contradicts the message, well, the signal will win. In many transformations, senior leaders are appointed sponsors, they mandate, and they join those occasional steer codes. But they rarely role model the new behavior and shape it. Let's take the AI example mentioned by Andreas before. Today, many senior leaders are very, very quick to mandate new AI adoption. They are extremely ambitious on the impact, the business impact it's going to drive. But if you are truly honest, can you say that you look up to your senior leaders as role models for new AI behavior? In the way they use it every day, in the way they use it to change and challenge the organization, and the way they use it to imagine the future. Local leaders, they matter even more, because that's where employees, they will experience the change. But without role modeling from the top, those local leaders will also struggle to reinforce the new behavior. Transformation becomes believable only when leaders at every level lifts it. You typically track whether the implementation was completed, not whether the behavior has changed. Most transformation track delivery milestones, they track those lacking business KPIs, but miss the critical link in between. They measure system launches, training completion, revenue growth, and profitability. But rarely whether people are actually doing something and working differently. And what we measure, that tends to determine what we manage, prioritize, and what we fund. We invest heavily in getting to launch, but not that much in making people behave differently. You might recognize those transformations where perhaps 90% of the budget was spent up until launch, leaving only 10% of the budget for the reinforcement period. We call this launch and leave. Leadership attention and resources move on much before the transformation actually had the time to deliver its intended impact. And then of course we still wonder, where did that business impact go? Why doesn't it follow? We are the leaders who lead and stay actively engaged throughout transformations. They represent two different business units at Essity. Let's meet them. From the outside, transformation can look straightforward. Inside is a different story. It means pressure, resistance, competing priorities, and the pull of old habits. Now imagine managing all of that across 150 countries and 36,000 employees. Essity is a global leader in hygiene and health. Every day, around one billion people use one of its products. From brands such as TORQ, TENA, and Libero. In hospitals, in homes, and in workplaces. In this conversation, two of Essity's commercial leaders takes us inside that challenge. Eda Emus, Vice President Commercial Development, Health and Medical. And Reiner Rosmeyer, Vice President, Global Commercial Development, Professional Hygiene. They lead different parts of the business, but they face the same question. How do you turn commercial ambition into behavior that lasts? Welcome, Eda and Reiner. Thank you. Welcome both. Good to see you. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. You both had long and quite similar careers at Essity. From sales and commercial into controlling regional roles with P&L. To your current position as commercial development vice presidents. And we know that over the past 25 years, you have both led and been part of several major transformations. And today we are, of course, really curious to hear your experiences from those. Especially the ones that did not succeed. And then we have a few questions for you. But before we dive into those, we would love to hear your reflections on the poll that we just saw. Yes. And then we know that we have the results in here. And then if I ask you, Eda, to reflect on what we're seeing right now, what comes to mind? Well, for me it's very surprising that the design for failure is so low because that would instinctively be my favorite. Yeah. But it also reflects that there are several different reasons, isn't there? Yes. But the design for failure for me is that we often totally underestimate the lagging nature of transformations. That it takes time from you have it in the PowerPoint to see the impact. And that behavior change is just underestimated. So for me that is very often the reason. Do you see it the same way, Rainer? Or do you have any different perspectives? Well, yes. I can only agree. And then I jump immediately to the other two. I take two here. Yeah. Because you rely on busy people. Very familiar. Always drive transformation with the same people. You put it on top. And the other one is leadership is not involved for real. Leadership is there in the beginning, but then delegates it away. For me a clear case for failure and that's a big experience. Leadership is not really behind it all the way through for the transformation. Yes. Great. Thanks for just sharing those. I want to jump to the next question. Yes. This is for you. Yes. So when you look across the transformations that you've been part of. What are those early signs that you see that people are complying on paper, but not really changing their behavior? Yeah. I think what I have observed very often is there's huge excitement in the boardroom. Everything looks good. You have a good plan. It's on PowerPoint. But when you go out in the corridor, it's not happening. The conversation don't change. Habits don't change. And decision rights don't change, for example. And I think I have something which I like. It's the level minus two test. Because your direct reports will always say it's all going well. But if you go further down to, I call it for the sake of this conversation, the local leader, the local country leader, and you talk to that person and they say, well, I don't know, or I have a lot of objections. This is the early signs that it doesn't really happen yet or it does not happen at all. Yeah. So going out there, looking at the local areas, that's often where you can see the signs. Because it's the local leader for the sake of a transformation, who is the multiplier or is actually the bottleneck. And this is where you have to really feel it. And very often, that step outside the boardroom, find that feedback. That is an early sign. And you need to be connected in the transformation. Yeah. And I think you don't get that feedback when you delegate it to early away. So it might a lot of time happen between you figure really out that it doesn't work at all. Yeah, that's a good one. I'd like to let you into the conversation, Ida. And I would love to hear your reflections on, is there a pattern that you see across the transformations that fail to deliver impact? I think there are several things in those patterns, but I would mention two. Yeah. One of them is that we sometimes live in this fantasy world where we think when we have it in the PowerPoint, we've thought it through, then that is almost the same as a transformation. And we forget that when you add the human element to it, and when you add kind of now we need to change behavior, then the mess starts. And we simply didn't have it in the PowerPoint thinking. So this, getting out of the fantasy world, understanding that that will require quite a bit, is one of them. Yes. And I would say the other one is true leadership support. And it's not just signing it off and saying, I'm a sponsor in the background, but true support, continuous support, where it really matters in the different weekly steer calls maybe, is another one. If you forget that, then it fails. Yes. And as a consultant, maybe it's a bit provocative here that the PowerPoint doesn't solve all the different solutions. But I think in our collaboration in the past couple of years, we've also experienced how we can move it beyond the PowerPoint and into the organization, just as you say. And to your point, Rainer, when the leadership is actually starting to get involved, not only on the top level, but a few levels down below. And if it was for the PowerPoint, all transformations would be perfect, right? So, yes. Yes. Okay. I have a question for both of you. Is there something that you believed about transformation, maybe early in your career, that you later on had to unlearn? And maybe I'll start with you, Ida. I thought transformation was logic. Yeah. I thought that there was like a straight line. If you had decided it, you could go implement and kind of follow a straight line. Like a good project execution. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Why not? Probably the biggest thing I had to unlearn, that things become messy and you have to understand and navigate that. Do you have an example when that turned into a not so great success by applying that linear logic? I could probably mention many, many different projects because of almost most of them. You simply cannot have that consistent logic. But looking, coming directly from business school, you think that is the theory, that is how it should be. So I would say almost every project follows a messy kind of process before you translate the PowerPoint into the behavior change needed and sustained behavior change. It's not only in the pilot phase. It's not only the three weeks after launch. It is sustained behavior change and building that into the, call it leadership system and routines. Yeah. Only then you see the impact. So I don't have a specific example. I would say almost all of them follow this messy kind of process. Yes. What about you, Rainer? It goes along the same lines, you know, when you come in from, as a young leader, you design the perfect process. You know, the rationale, who you involve, what is the topic you want to solve and how you reinforce afterwards. One thing I had to unlearn that you don't make errors on the road, that you always get something wrong. For example, you don't involve in the first place the right people, but you only know that in hindsight. The other one is you need to communicate about it. And what I had to unlearn that when you only communicate two, three times, it's not good enough. You spoke, I think, about the 66 days. And I think you need to repeat it 66 times in order to get there and you're still not there. So it is not logical, as you said. It's not rational. You make errors on the way. And it is way different, a much bigger effort. And another thing maybe which I did not unlearn, but what I had to learn, you can't do too much at the same time. Because you believe, because you have that time lag, you don't know about the time lag yet. You believe you can do so much in parallel. You can't. That's another thing I had to unlearn. Manage expectation. It takes way longer than you believe. If it's three months, it will be maybe sometimes three years to make real profound change. I asked Edith if there was a specific transformation she related to when she learned this. And I'll ask you the same because you've shared two pretty strong things that you had to unlearn or at least learn the past one. Do you have any particular memory from the past 25 years where you really thought, this is a point where it didn't really go as I thought and I have to do something differently the next time? Plenty of examples, but I think I can relate to a very big experience of my company transformation where we thought it was all done the same way. It was all the right way. We had all the processes implemented. But there's one learning which I took from it. We never socialized it in the right way. So people never loved what we did in a transformation. We did not win their minds and their hearts really. And I think you need to win. We won the minds, but we did not win their hearts. And that was one of the biggest learning or unlearning that I had to do. That logic is not enough. You need really to win their hearts that people are passionate about it. That was one of the biggest projects where I learned most from. Yes. Thank you. If we look at the failures and success, many organizations are quite good at summarizing the success and continue doing that. But how do you work with taking the learnings from failed transformations and change projects into account for the design of the new one? Do you have any system or process in place where you share what didn't work so that you can improve for the next time? We have it built into our processes. Whether we then always do it is a different thing, but absolutely it is built as part of whenever we finish a project transformation, there is a learning session. To be honest, I don't think we always do it as well as we could. I take your answer. It is exactly that. Very often when it goes well, because it's gone well, you walk away from it, you don't take the learning. And when it doesn't work well, you don't have a proper end to it and you miss the learning. So I think that is a good exercise to do that in a much better way. We are not the best at it. Yeah. And it sounds like we reflect back to your starting point with the design for failure. There is a process, there is a way where we should do it, but maybe we haven't accounted for how people actually will use the learning from the failures. True. It has been really nice to hear some of the elements of failures. And even though it's more fun to speak about success. What particularly stood out to me was when you started mentioning what we saw in the poll, the design for failure being so very small, where that is most often where transformations fail to launch something that will then continue to live in an organization. We designed it for the launch. So that was a good point that resonated a lot with what I see across transformations. And for now, what you've all been waiting for, the silver bullet solution. Well, we don't have one. There are multiple different factors that contribute to success across transformations. And to start this conversation, we've asked a few leaders at Essity to share what they believe characterizes successful transformations. That's a very big question when a transformation succeeds, but I think there are a number of aspects to that. Many people ask me, Sam, when will this transformation succeed that you've been responsible for? And sometimes I say, well, first of all, we need to see the behavior change before we expect to see the impact. You have to have rules engagement. You have to have certain discipline around that. You have to follow up and you have to be really methodical about following up afterwards. So the idea of transformation is fantastic. But if you don't follow up and you don't put plans in place and measure how you're actually performing, then the transformation won't work. In order to get a change result, you need people acting differently. So you really need to see a changed behavior and changed habits. Change in behaviors often relies upon the leader of the person to reinforce what has been taught to them. The change and the transformation needs to resonate with people so you understand why are we doing this. It must be meaningful. People make behaviors stick because if you don't take the people with you, the behaviors will never work. And I think in businesses that I've been in where people are fully engaged and they have good leadership, then the behaviors will stick. I think as a leader, you need to provide the dream, if I may use that word. You need to provide something that people can believe in. And you need to stay true to that dream and vision. When we're asking or when we're trying to change multiple behaviors, then it can be quite difficult. So the best thing to do in my experience is start small. So first of all, focus on very few behavioral changes and make sure that those behaviors are being reinforced constantly. You have to keep revisiting what it is you're trying to do, what the purpose is. And as long as everyone's very clear in that, as long as you're checking in, and as long as you are thorough in your approach to it, you just have to keep that front of mind every time. We've heard now from Anna, Olivia and Sam, and now it's your turn. So try to think about the transformation you have seen succeed. What was the most important driver of success? And again, you will find a small bottom in the top right corner where you can enter the word cloud. Please provide your inputs here. And we will come back to the result. But before that and while you put your answers in, then I think we can continue a little bit here. Ida and Rainer. Sure. And Ida, I'll start with you. What's the pattern you've seen across successful transformations? I see that we have thought it through to the end on what behavior changes are needed. That we go deep enough into that, that we really think, what do we need everybody in the chain to do differently? And that we set up a system around that to reinforce that behavior. Often we have forgotten to do that. Often we have not understood what does the individual in the process need to do? And what does the system need to set up to support that? So that is one part of it. Then another one is that changes also both on individual level and on organizational level. So really thinking, what does the person, what does the system need? And have both in mind when you do that. How do you, is it easy, difficult? Like how do you go about this, about translating something into behaviors? At least it takes awareness and it takes time. Just thinking through that actually when you design, an example I can think of is a system change. We want to change the way we categorize our customers or segment our customers. Sounds like a really good idea in a PowerPoint. But if you think through that somebody actually in a corner of Europe somewhere needs to do something in a system. Have we thought through how that should happen? How much time it takes? Who should support that? And who should continue to support that? Only when you have done that sufficiently, you can actually start to say, now I have understood the change needed. I have a system that supports it. So I don't know if it's difficult, but it at least takes that awareness and it takes time. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Rainer, if I spend focus on you, what are leading indicators that people are changing behaviors? Yeah. I think it connects to the question which we had before. When it fails, the conversation stays in the boardroom. Or if you want to talk about it differently, the leaders stay engaged all the way through. They own it. And I like what you just said in the previous conversation. The leaders need to really engage also in the detail. Not in the detailed execution, but they need to understand what it really takes to reach all levels of the organization to get everybody engaged. I think when you have a successful transformation, you will see that people unprompted will celebrate success. And again, go to the, not to the direct reports, go to the N minus two or N minus three in order to see if they have celebrated early success. If the behaviors have changed, conversations have changed. And very often when we design something new for transformation, decision rights have to change. Because otherwise it's not a change. Something has to change or your transformation, something has to change. When everything stays the same in execution, then it hasn't really changed. So decisions have changed, habits have changed, conversations are different. People celebrate and are passionate about it. And you should get feedback on errors. Because then you do something right when you get errors. When everything is good, be careful. Friction leads to progress and you need actually feedback on errors. If there's silence, this is mostly when it goes wrong. And if there's a lot of friction, then it goes right. So those are all indicators which come to the top of my mind. What do you do when you experience that silence? Like, I mean, how do you shake it up to actually see the reality? Go in there, you know, put your sleeves up and listen. Listen, talk and see is there an outcome. Because you designed it for a customer. Is it a customer external, you know, where you want to grow your business? Or is it an internal customer to improve processes and go back and collect the interview? When it's really silent, you need to go there and just test it again and again and again. And go to the right level in the organization. Go to the right level, exactly. What does that mean? Local level or? It depends on the transformation, but really go to the people that needs to do the change and not to the leaders in the chain. Yeah. Or both. Yeah, makes sense. And the middle management is super important. You know, the layer where it is, where the biggest translators is, when it really hits the shop floor, so to say, the change. Yeah. I love that you bring up conversations because it is quite remarkable how such a, what we call small thing can have such a big effect in an organization. If you have them in the right way. Yes. And it sounds like both of you are mentioning that the power of conversation carries some weight. Yes. Depending on where in the level you put it, depending on where the focus needs to go. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I know that you are in the middle of an AI transformation, a quite big one, which I think is super exciting. And we are all right. I'm sorry. Aren't we all? All of us all. Yeah, yeah. I know. What has surprised you the most? So again, I will start with you and then Rainer, I would like to hear from you afterwards. What has surprised me is the amount of emotions in there. And that goes on society's level. It goes in the organization. It goes in individual level. That emotions are really, really big around this. And I think we shouldn't underestimate that emotions are data points. That it shows something about the transformation that is ongoing or not ongoing. And leaders have emotions as well. That's also really, really important to have that in mind, that we are not machines. We come with our own luggage on that. And how do you steer that? How do you navigate the emotions around that? And sometimes emotions can be hidden sort of in cynicism that I've seen transformation fail before and over promise under deliver. AI is just another one of those. How do you navigate that? How do you navigate the over excitement that some people think that AI will solve everything? And those are two extremes that we need to navigate. That has surprised me a lot that the emotional element is so big. Can I ask, how do you navigate it? I try to be clear with my own position on that spectrum. And I lean towards the over excited, to be honest. That I'm like, we can do many things with that. And I try to make sure I take that understanding or that awareness with me into the discussions. And try to leave room for the other viewpoints and other emotions as well. But it is important to navigate the emotions here. Yeah, makes sense. What about you, Rein? What has surprised you the most? Well, it's first on a personal level, how much my personal efficiency with low entry barriers. You know, I really increased my personal efficiency tremendously. And it's every week it gets better. Because, for example, the agents learn with you. So that has been the total surprise how much it does for me. The second thing is how tangible, quite quickly, you can do things. How really it solves business issues which were complex and it provides fast, tangible output. But then there comes also the other surprises. How much of the problems we have in a business or challenges or opportunities are parked on the AI. So you don't have a proper conversation. No, we do with this AI. You know, AI is not the appropriate one. This is also a surprise how quickly everything defaults to AI today. So those are three big surprises or learnings over time now. AI needs to solve everything, right? AI needs to solve everything, exactly. And I think another one is I think you need to learning more as a surprise is you need first the personal engagement and drive your personal efficiency because you need to learn how to speak about it. And in leadership, you can't delegate it away. You need really engage in it because you afterwards need to make decisions. Is this the right thing? And you need it like you need to speak English to have a conversation with you guys right now. And everybody needs to learn the AI language that you can converse on it in a good way. So you need a personal efficiency. And this is also quite a good learning. Maybe not so much as a surprise for me. It's more learning. I remember listening to a podcast recently where there was this CEO of a company who actually decided to hire a little team around him to only work with how to imagine the future with AI in that specific organization. So that was a good move. That's a cool thing. It was also to really be able to role model that behavior. Yes. Yes. It starts at the top also. Yes. Yeah. By me, for example, leading commercial development, we need to role model some of that behavior. Yes. And that is a great segue. Speaking about role modeling and leadership. I'm very curious to hear both your perspectives. How do the two of you role model behavioral change in your respective organization as senior leaders? I can, I can quote, we're just in a process of one transformation. And it is slower than we expected. You need to communicate more about it. And when you look at it, when it's on the time lag, I could say now, well, this has to, has to move on now without me. And I think my role modeling is that I'm getting even more energy in it, not accepting the slowness of it. And I think it's just driving change, role modeling that you can keep it on the agenda. It would be so exciting to get something new on the agenda. Role model that you keep it on the agenda as long as it takes. Because I'm, I'm convinced it depends on your business model, which you're in, you know, but change when you have something which was successful for a long time. And when you want to go to the next level, really change in very successful business to the next level, you need to be even more persistent to get to that level. And this is how I try to role model it. Do I do it well? I don't know. But this is what I try. Yeah, I'm with you. And I'm not an expert in any way. I have as many failures as anybody else. But what I try to do is to manage the impatience in the system and the organization and the personal impatience as well that let's move forward. And stay engaged. Be there. Be there very, very often and even more often than you think is needed to repeat and repeat and repeat. Makes sense. And we now actually have the word cloud ready from all of you who answered in the poll. What are the success criteria that you have seen across transformations? And we'd love to hear your reflections on what we're seeing here because the ones that are mentioned the most as success criteria are leadership, communication and engagement. What are your thoughts when you hear that, Rander? No surprise. Yeah. I think it's the things that we talked here about. You need a leadership which is engaged and communicates, communicates, communicates. 17 times that the message arrives. I think those are the key ingredients for change and transformation. Ida, leadership, communication, engagement. Yeah. One to one what I would have picked if I was to pick three because that's where it all starts. Yes. Great. They are very connected, right? Yes. Yes. All right. So we would like to invite you in the audience now to ask a few questions for Ida and Rainer. So please put your questions in the chat. And I actually think that a few came in already. So I'm just going to grab this one. So the first one is how to ensure that leadership is involved for real. And what does good leadership involvement actually look like in practice? I think... Do you want to go? Well, you know, I think it's something we talked here about. I think you need to stay engaged. Good leadership. Stay on it for all the time. If you trigger it, don't let go. Delegate it away. You need to stay on it continuously. And I think another good practice is keep it simple. Don't make it too complicated and too ambitious. You know, put it in small steps what you want to achieve. That would be ad hoc thoughts on that question. And I would start before that to say get the priorities right. Is this important enough to put the right level of leadership into it? Then we do it. But sometimes we have too many competing priorities so that it is actually practically not possible to have as much attention as needed. So start making it a priority. And now we mentioned communication before. And that is one thing. But if we should try to be a little bit practical, what is it that the leaders can actually do that makes a difference? I think when you think about the process, first you need to be clear, as I said, you need to put a simple objective out. Secondly, as a leader, pick the right stakeholders. This is where you can really fail when you don't pick the right people for the transformational change. You know, you talked about co-creation. Use the people in the co-creation to also carry out the change. And then build a drum beat and make time in the agenda for the drum beat. You need a drum beat afterwards. OK, this is the first big step they want to take. That's the second step we want to take. That's the third step. And then build the time into the agenda to follow up, to allow space in the agenda for everyone in order to articulate the problems which come away or also the opportunities that you find. And you need to allow that space in the agenda as a leader. And be deliberate with your messages. And communication is not just one way. Communication is also listening. So make sure that you have that in the loop as well. Makes sense. I'll take one more. Yes. How do you successfully take over a change that someone else started? That's an interesting one. I think that's not, I think it's not so complicated, you know, when you're, because it's, I think it's not about you as a person. It's about what you want to achieve. And I think it's a good opportunity when it's well designed. What you can bring to it is maybe a different, some adjustments on your view or where you see errors. But taking over a transformation project which somebody else has started, I think it's good. It should be OK. Yes. And I did that several times and it was not for me. Sometimes it was happy as it was good work already happening by somebody else. So trust the work. Yeah. Bring your judgment in it and then just carry on with it. Because stopping some change process, that might be quite dangerous, you know, when you're halfway through it, it creates more confusion. Yes. And you need to carry it through. If everybody was there from the leadership at the beginning and has been well grounded, no, I see it as a good opportunity. And I think we both have done it a couple of times. I have done it several times and I have failed many times in the beginning because I completely underestimated how much time needs to go into understanding what is it? What was the purpose? Where are we in the change process? Because underestimating or getting that wrong and jumping and thinking that we are at a different place in the transformation makes it very, very challenging. I'm with you in the perfect world. It should be possible to step in and continue. And I hope I have learned it by now to spend sufficient time understanding where we are in the process before taking over. Yeah. Okay. We'll have time for one last question. Thanks for your input for this. I like this one, actually. How do you get frontline employees to also change behavior so it doesn't stop at executive level? Think it through from the beginning what behavior change is needed also for the frontline people. Co-create with them. Exactly. Make sure they understand, not as a kind of, oh, by the way, you also need to do something at the end of the PowerPoint. But when designing the PowerPoint, you have already talked to them. Exactly. You know what is needed. They know what is needed. They hopefully even think it's a good idea so that their input is built in already here. But it's not easy. No. No. Exactly that. I can only repeat it. If you design the rationale for a transformation, you need to think about the customers, so to say, who do it for. If it's for the frontline, then start with them in the process and co-generate with them from the beginning. Yeah. And then it won't be a surprise. Yeah. I think that those are some great closing words of this conversation. And we would like to say a huge thank you for joining us today. Pleasure. Thanks a lot. To you for having us. It's been a privilege to hear not only what fails and gets in the way of transformations and maybe more now on the success factors. How do you actually make it work? Launching a transformation is the part everyone can see. The harder part comes afterwards. When people have to choose the new way of working again and again. Until it stops feeling new. At implement we have spent more than 30 years helping organizations through that stretch. And we begin at the end. the end. What business results do we need? Which behaviors will create it? And what has to happen every day to make those behaviors easier to keep up? From there, we build what it takes. Clear priorities, leaders and managers who reinforce the change in everyday conversations, colleagues who model it, processes and tools that make it easier, and measures that track the behavior as closely as they track it all out. There's no blueprint for this. It always depends on the organization's own reality. So we co-create the change with the people who will live with it. How else will we get it right? Once new behavior becomes routine, and routine starts moving the numbers, a transformation has landed, and we leave the organization better off than when we arrived. We know that there are many factors behind successful transformations. Looking to research from University of Oxford, we can see that there are four that in particular correlates with success. There are however two factors that stand out a bit extra, which we find very interesting. So, a linear reason and a structured approach have very little correlation with success. Yet, what we see across multiple organizations and transformations is a lot of focus being spent on communicating the why and creating structured plans. Now, if transformations were only about implementing new systems, tools and processes, a structured or linear approach might actually have worked. But transformations involve people. And as we have explored today, people don't change in a straight line. We fall back into old habits, we default and prioritize to what is urgent, and we do what people around us confirms. So if we want transformations to succeed, we need to take the design into account for how people actually change. And that leads us to what we should do when designing transformations. Because we need to start from the behavior that must change, and then work backwards towards the deliverables. Successful transformation starts with a simple question. What do people need to do differently on Monday morning? How will leadership support that? And how will that drive our our business result? Let's take a familiar ambition, you need to become more customer centric. I think we've all heard that in some shape or form. But that's a direction is not yet a deliverable. Instead, turn that into behavior. Like, every account manager opened the quarterly review by stating the customer's problem, not selling our solutions. Now we have something to design around. Our recommendation is to start by building an impact case. Define the vision, and then follow with the business impact that you want to achieve. identify what new behaviors will drive that impact. And how leaders will support it. And only then follow with the deliverables that will enable the behavioral change. And speaking about the design, there is one way that is really great to do it. It's by co-creation. And you should always build the transformation with the people in it, not for them. Because involving people early, that's not what makes a difference, is how you involve them. The people closest to the work, they see things that the transformation team cannot. They know where the friction is, where and how something works in practice, and where a potential solution might fall short. Our recommendation is to let people in the transformation help define the problem, shape the solution, and test it while there is still time to change. Because co-creation is not whether you ask for input, it's whether the people that were involved in the transformation actually helped change the outcomes. Conversations are perhaps the smallest, biggest thing driving transformations. They shape what people pay attention to, how they make sense of change, and ultimately what they do differently. And it all starts at the top. The conversations that senior leaders have with their teams ripples through the organization, shaping what leaders at each level they discuss, prioritize, and act on. So our recommendation is to make transformations leader-led, not PowerPoint-led. Equip each layer of leaders in your organization to drive deliberate conversations, supported by the right tools, the workshops, and the capabilities. And then each layer equips the next one, ensuring that the transformation is embedded throughout the organization. This actually also serves as a really, really strong reality check. So if senior leaders, they are struggling to make sense of the transformation and share it with the next layer, well, then that might be your sign that something needs to change before you actually move on. Manage the trade-offs. Well, actively manage the trade-offs between running the business and changing it. Transformation requires capacity, and capacity comes at a cost. Successful organizations, they make those choices explicit where the capacity should come from. Trade-offs comes at a short-term cost, lower targets, deprioritized initiatives, and temporary productivity dips. But they also sense a really, really strong message throughout the organization. When employees see that leaders make deliberate choices and they are willing to make sacrifices, that is where people see that the transformation truly matters. When trade-offs sometimes are not possible, investments are required in the people, in the time, and in the capabilities required to drive the transformation. So our recommendation is to make trade-offs and investments much more explicit than it is today. Align the targets, the priorities, and the incentives with the behaviors needed to really drive that transformation. We have now been taking you through four design flows. Yes. And then we've had a great conversation with Eden Reiner, hearing their perspectives, and we just backed up through all those success criterias. And now it's time for you listening in to put your own transformation to the test. So for the last time, you'll click that link up to the right corner. And we want you to think about your most important transformation or change project that you're currently involved in or about to start. And be honest with yourself while you answer these four questions. You can select yes or no, and if it's a maybe, it's probably leaning more towards a no. Have you defined exactly which behaviors that needs to change and for whom? Have you involved those affected in designing the solution and the journey to get there? Then ask yourself, have you established the leadership routines that will enforce the new behavior? And the final question we want you to answer is, have you made the trade-offs and the investments explicit for the organization? And while you answer that, I turn the question to you, Christina. How do you work with these four questions when you design and lead transformations? Well, we need to bring them in quite early. So what we often do is that in the beginning when we sit together in the team and make the impact case, that is where we start discussing many of them. And then they need to be addressed throughout the project and the transformation. Yes. All right. So I hope you had the chance to fill in your answers. We will share the result after today. And then as a last thing, we really want to encourage you to take these four questions back to your transformation and share it with your teams. If any of them made you hesitate now that you tried to provide the answer, that might be where you want to start. And if you're struggling with how, then let's have a conversation. Thanks a lot for joining us today. Thank you so much.