Getting Off the Transformation Treadmill: From Bold Plans to System Evolution
A recent Harvard Business Review article, Get Off the Transformation Treadmill by Darrell Rigby and Zach First, puts into words what many leaders have been feeling for years, often quietly, sometimes painfully.
The article opens with a satirical headline from The Onion:
“CEO Unveils Bold New Plan To Undo Damage From Last Year’s Bold New Plan.”
It’s funny because it’s familiar.
Across industries, organisations are stuck in cycles of serial transformation. Strategy resets, restructures, operating model shifts, each one intended to fix the last, yet collectively draining energy, trust, and value.
This is a strong, well-argued piece. What follows here is not a critique of it, but a practical extension - connecting its insights to a system-level way leaders can act now, without triggering yet another “bold new plan.”
The Hidden Cost of Serial Transformation
Rigby and First describe the downstream effects clearly:
Change fatigue that erodes employee morale
Customer and partner hesitation as priorities shift year to year
Investor scepticism and discounted future earnings
Leadership time consumed by clean-ups instead of innovation
Transformation, originally meant to unlock growth, becomes a treadmill: constant movement with diminishing returns.
Importantly, the authors are not arguing against transformation itself.
Transformation Isn’t the Problem - Misalignment Is
Some transformations are not only justified, but essential.
The article highlights BYD, which evolved from a battery manufacturer in 1995 into the world’s largest electric vehicle producer by 2024, surpassing Tesla. That transformation wasn’t cosmetic, it was a response to real technological and market shifts, executed with coherence and conviction.
The distinction the authors make is subtle but crucial:
The best way to manage transformations is to minimise the need for them in the first place.
From Reorganisations to Living Systems
Rigby and First point to organisations like Microsoft, Pixar, and Boston Scientific — companies that outperform not because they avoid change, but because they embed it into the system itself.
They describe these businesses as adaptive ecosystems:
Continuously sensing shifts in their environment
Pruning unproductive activities early
Nurturing new growth avenues
Evolving steadily, rather than lurching from reset to reset
This framing resonates deeply with the analogy I use throughout my upcoming book The Return of the Roaring 20s: the modern business as a living city.
The Modern City Analogy
A city doesn’t “transform” every year. It evolves.
Roads are widened where congestion appears. Old infrastructure is retired when it no longer serves its purpose. New districts emerge as economic activity shifts. Utilities, transport, zoning, culture, and governance must stay in balance, or the whole system suffers.
When leaders treat organisations like static machines, transformation becomes the only lever left. When they understand them as complex, interdependent systems - like cities - evolution becomes possible.
This is the common ground between HBR’s ecosystem metaphor and the Stravus system.
The Four Capabilities and the Practical Gap
The article outlines four capabilities leaders must develop:
Master systems management
Detect emerging realities early
Increase agility to keep problems small
Grow net value for all stakeholders
They are right. But many executives hit a practical wall here.
The question becomes:
Where, exactly, is my system misaligned right now?
Without that clarity, well-intentioned change efforts often:
Accelerate speed before stability exists
Scale before systems are ready
Introduce AI before data trust is established
Reorganise structure instead of fixing flow
The result is another reset and another lap on the treadmill.
Orientation Before Action
Most failed transformations don’t fail because of poor execution. They fail because leaders act without orientation.
Before deciding what to change, organisations need to understand:
Their current system maturity
The constraints limiting progress
Whether they need incremental evolution or true transformation
Which moves will compound and which will destabilise
This is the role of a diagnostic.
Not to create change, but to prevent unnecessary change.
From Transformation Cycles to System Evolution
Rigby and First conclude that chronic transformation is a sign of deep systemic misalignment, between strategy, structure, and the realities of the environment.
I agree.
Getting off the transformation treadmill doesn’t require another bold plan. It requires seeing the organisation clearly as a system - much like a modern city - and evolving it deliberately, constraint by constraint.
That clarity doesn’t come from workshops, offsites, or vision decks.
It comes from diagnosis.
Take the next step: diagnose before you transform
If this article resonated, don’t respond with another initiative. Start by answering a simpler, more powerful question:
Where is my business system misaligned right now and what kind of change does it actually need?
The Stravus Diagnostic gives you:
A system-level view of your organisation’s maturity
Clear visibility into the constraints holding progress back
Guidance on whether you need incremental evolution or true transformation
A grounded starting point for decisions that compound, rather than reset
Orientation before transformation.