On April 2019, a high-profile consultancy firm was sued by a leading car rental company to the tune of $32M. The reason? A failed website and apps redesign project.

Available information points to obvious mistakes made by the supplier. However, looking at the customer’s approach and logic it’s just as obvious that all the signs were pointing to a failure in the making. In other words they were asking for trouble.

This news created quite a stir in the business world, but it’s just one example of many similar and often repeated failures in technology and methodology change initiatives. Failures of this kind usually have three things in common:
1. changes are applied from predefined recipes (other’s success stories)
2. changes are limited to just a part of the organisation (i.e. R&D or IT)
3. change strategy and execution is delegated to external ‘partners’.


There are alternative ways to approach change that don’t rely on magical recipes. Successful change happens by taking people on an evolutionary journey. Small steps are validated through natural selection. This journey needs to be aligned and coherent with the organisation strategy and vision. It is also one that is bound to be unique and specific to each organisation.

Speaker:
Gaetano Mazzanti