After the bear: how you actually run the transformation

By Sam Randall & Sébastien Delautre 

There is a striking parallel between a well-run transformation and a well-run leadership search: neither can succeed if you start with a generic spec instead of the core business problem. 

Facing an AI-driven landscape for the first time, boards are discovering that technology isn’t the real bottleneck, people and execution are. In this piece, we compare transformation execution directly with executive search through a single framework: The Transformation Triptych. 

  • Clarity: From vague mandates to value destinations. 
  • Competence: From legacy CVs to systemic capacity. 
  • Control: From command-and-report to holding course. 

Here is how you align the discipline that delivers change with the talent that sustains it. 

The problem statement

We are naming something many of us felt but few had put into words: that a company with market share, a customer base, and proprietary data does not need to win the technology race, only to avoid being last, outrunning the bear. That a transformation is “fundamentally a people problem wearing a technology costume,” and that it must be “delivered, not sponsored from a safe distance.” Read together, those three ideas are a diagnosis: technology is the costume, not the body; the work is people and execution. 

This piece takes the next step: the operating question that diagnosis raises. If transformation is a people-and-execution problem, what is the discipline that delivers it, and how do you hire against that discipline? By co-authoring this piece, we collectively bring the execution lens and the talent lens: a triptych used to run transformations at scale, and what it takes to screen, assess, and hire against it. 

The triptych does not compete with the six pillars initially set out in Sam’s article but acts as the spine that ties them together. The stakeholder management pillar already holds half the answer to how a mandate spreads: turning a fuzzy brief into a narrative people repeat. The pillars closest to Kotter carry the “delivered, not sponsored” idea: change that is carried, not delegated from a distance. What follows gives that spine a name and a mechanism, anchored in a framework we know works, and adapted for a world where change is the default state. 

Sébastien reflects: “We have sat in too many steering committees where thirty KPIs were presented, none traceable to a budget line or a business outcome. We have watched boards approve multi-year ‘transformations’ without being able to state, in one paragraph, what value must exist at the end that does not exist today. We have seen leaders nod in the room and say, off the record: ‘We all know the paradigm has shifted. We just can’t say it out loud.’ Some are protecting their position. Some are trapped in systems that reward certainty over truth. Some are sincere but lack the language and the mechanisms to act differently.” 

This is not only an execution gap. It is a collective courage gap. 

Readers of David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around! (2013) will recognise clarity, competence, and control as the pillars of his leader-leader model. We borrow that scaffolding deliberately, whilst enriching one pillar. Where Marquet gives control away, decentralising authority to where the information sits, we use control to mean holding course toward the value the organisation set out to create. Not because we like control, but because in a world where change is the default state, the destination must be held, even when the path keeps shifting. 

Clarity. The why and the value destination.

Strategy and expected value must be defined and shared between the board and executive committee before anything moves. Clarity is not a slogan; it is the destination. It answers: why change at all, why this strategy and not another, and what value must exist at the end that does not exist today? Without this, you transform for the sake of transforming, moving fast toward an undefined point. 

In our work, we have seen boards spend days debating roadmaps and tech stacks while refusing to spend thirty minutes defining the value destination. Not because they are stupid, but because as soon as the value is explicit, some commitments can no longer be defended. Clarity is uncomfortable. It forces choices. In a world where change is the new normal, the only thing more expensive than changing direction is pretending you know where you are going. 

What has been fascinating about our conversations is the striking parallel between a well-run transformation and a well-run leadership search. Helping leaders define a search brief, particularly founders navigating scale for the first time, reveals a common theme: they have a broadly defined idea of what their next hire should look like, but this view is often built on assumptions that do not hold up under scrutiny. To really understand a brief for a newly created hire, you cannot start with a standard profile; you must understand the business model, the current state of technology, processes, offerings, and behaviors, and the precise gap between where the client is and where value actually sits. 

Looking at the AI and Agentic transformation landscape across businesses of all scales, every board is facing an operational transformation they are meeting for the first time. The risk is hiring against technical hype rather than the actual operational changes required to capture value. 

It is no longer enough for Executive Search to simply execute a spec. We must go back to first principles and co-create the spec from core business objectives, acting as the convener to bring external advisors and domain perspectives into the room before a search is initiated. Search firms must enter the conversation much earlier, bringing market insights and talent realities to the strategy table so all parties reach complete clarity on the brief, objectives, current status, and target state. This is where Clarity lives: a job specification is not just a recruitment brief, but the starting point for turning expected value into actual performance. 

Competence. The right crew, at both levels.

Competence is about putting the right people in the right places, not only vertical competence (deep in a single domain to solve an immediate problem), but systemic competence (able to see across the whole system and keep the organisation capable of solving the next ten problems). The hard, unglamorous part of servant leadership is naming, without wounding, where a leadership team is strong in its silos but weak across the system. Competence in this world is the courage to say: “What we believed yesterday is no longer true. Here is how we adapt.” and the humility to build teams that can say it after you. 

This is where Sam’s previous piece focuses by proposing a new way of thinking about the problem. The historical approach for assessing transformation competence has been looking at track records as evidence. Whilst logically sound, the spanner in the works is AI. 

AI covers a range of applications: from SDLC integration, process efficiency, and individual productivity to rapid prototyping or completely reimagining the business model. In some areas, competence can be inferred from historical achievements; in others, it requires a complete blue-sky rethink. 

Without absolute Clarity on what the business is trying to solve, it is impossible to know which competencies to screen for. Evaluating candidates against generic leadership traits or legacy playbooks yields false positives. To assess systemic competence in an unproven landscape, we must look past previous experience and evaluate a candidate’s underlying mechanisms: how they diagnose cross-functional friction, trace technology spend directly to value, lead teams through ambiguity without defaulting to siloed thinking, and how they adapt these mechanisms in the era of AI. 

Control. Holding course, not command. 

Control is not command. It consists of two things: first, pushing decisions to where the information sits so people regain a sense of purpose and belonging; second, continuously verifying that every action, budget line, and metric supports the destination, correcting trajectory without theatre or blame. A narrative without a verification mechanism is merely a slogan. The mechanism: trace money from budget line to business outcome (line service value), reduce thirty KPIs to five conversations (margin, efficiency, growth, risk, experience), and put the CEO, CFO, CBO, and CIO in the same room with the same data. 

In our work, we have seen control used as a weapon (reporting layers, endless KPIs, centralised decisions) and we have seen its total absence (spent budgets, no link to outcomes, C-suite in separate rooms with separate data). Both kill transformation, one by suffocation, the other by drift. 

When evaluating leaders, an “innovation mindset” is only half the equation. The real test is whether they can install the control mechanisms, operating cadences, kill-criteria, and review loops that allow an organization to innovate at scale without losing hold of its primary value drivers. True control establishes the guardrails that allow an organization to take bold risks while consistently driving toward value. 

Three golden rules for transformation and for search

From vague brief to value destination. 

  • In transformation (Clarity): Stop roadmaps until you answer why change at all, why this strategy, and what value must exist at the end. 
  • In search: Stop the process until the Why and the value destination are explicitly co-developed with the client before any candidate is seen. A role defined without a value destination is a container without content. 

From vertical CV to systemic mechanism. 

  • In transformation (Competence): Name where the leadership team is strong in silos but weak across the whole system. 
  • In search: Select candidates for systemic sensemaking and adaptive mechanisms rather than traits, titles, or legacy playbooks. You are hiring a way of dealing with change as the default state. 

From command and report to decide and correct. 

  • In transformation (Control): Trace money from budget to outcome, reduce thirty KPIs to five conversations, and align the C-suite around shared facts. 
  • In search: Hire leaders who can install and live inside those mechanisms, push decisions to where the information sits, and correct trajectory based on facts. 

How to land?

Transformation is a people problem, not a technology one. This piece closes the loop on the discipline that delivers it and the talent that sustains it, ending where the search craft begins. 

Hiring alone solves nothing; a strategy is only worth something if its expected value is defined before the job description is written. This is why the brief is best co-developed with the client from the value stage, rather than inherited once set by someone else. The value conversation and the search conversation belong in the exact same room. 

If a transformation does not change who decides, what is measured, and what is stopped, it is not a transformation; it is a project with a budget. The goal is not to run another transformation. The goal is to build organisations that can deal with change as the default state. 

Everything else is theatre.

 

 About Sébastien Delautre – Senior Independent Advisor

Sébastien Delautre has led IT and transformation at group level for more than 25 years. First in corporate and investment banking, then in financial-market infrastructure, where he built and ran a group-wide transformation division as Managing Director. He brings the execution lens to this piece: the discipline that delivers change, he has seen from inside the steering committees where it is either held to its value or becomes theatre.