I recently received the article below. Unfortunately, despite considerable searching, I have been unable to identify the original author in order to link to the source. If anyone knows who wrote it, please let me know so that I can acknowledge them properly.
I am sharing it because it reinforces something I have been arguing over the past year: organisations cannot successfully transform if they don’t understand where they are starting from. My “phrase” has been:
No organisation can operate at a level hight that its current Capability
The work I do builds on the research of Myles Sweeney and Unitary Development Theory (UDT), which shows that transformation success depends not only on leadership, technology or methodology, but on whether an organisation has the capabilities required to absorb and sustain the change being introduced.
From this perspective, Transformation Readiness is determined by Organisation Capability alignment. Before launching a transformation, leaders need to understand whether the organisation’s capabilities are aligned with the ambition of the transformation. If they are not, those gaps become risks that can be identified, governed and addressed before they undermine the initiative.
If you are considering, or even if you have already embarked on, a transformation or business modernisation initiative, it’s not too late to find out whether or not your organisation has the capability to adopt and sustain that change. You’ll be saving a potential R85 in every R100 that you’re planning on spending on the initiative.
Here is the article. Please read and then answer this question:
What would it mean to you to save R85 in each R100 of your digital transformation spend?
“Here’s a number that should keep every CEO up at night: **85%**.
“That’s the failure rate for digital transformation initiatives at organizations that lack deep IT competence. For change management programs broadly? A consistent 75% — a figure that has barely budged since the 1960s.
“Eight-five percent. Let that sink in.
“We’re not talking about bad luck or bad timing. We’re talking about a systemic pattern. And once you understand *why* these initiatives fail, you can finally do something about it.
“The Real Reason Transformations Collapse
“The standard post-mortem usually goes something like this: “We didn’t have executive buy-in.” “The culture wasn’t ready.” “We moved too fast.” “We moved too slow.”
“These are symptoms. The root cause is something most leaders have never even heard of: **developmental-learning capacity**.
“Every organization has a certain capacity to absorb change — to learn, adapt, and implement new ways of working. When a transformation demands more from an organization than it can actually deliver, failure isn’t a risk. It’s a certainty.
“Think of it like training for a marathon. If you’ve been sedentary for five years, signing up for an ultramarathon next month isn’t ambitious — it’s reckless. No amount of willpower will compensate for a body that hasn’t been built for that level of exertion.
“Organizations work the same way. Most change initiatives are designed as if capacity were infinite. They’re not.
“The Maturity Spectrum Nobody Maps
“Here’s what makes this worse: most leaders don’t know where their organization sits on the developmental spectrum. They haven’t diagnosed their starting point.
“This means they can’t possibly know what kind of change their organization is capable of absorbing.
“Some organizations are at early developmental stages — still building foundational capabilities like formal processes, clear accountability, and structured decision-making. Others have progressed further, with adaptive cultures, integrated systems, and real capacity for innovation.
“The difference matters enormously. An organization at an early stage has almost no capacity to absorb complex transformation. It needs to start from the ground up — creative disruption, foundational work, building the basics before anything else.
“An organization at a more advanced stage can build incrementally — layering new capabilities on top of existing ones, iterating, adapting.
“**These are fundamentally different change paths.** Confusing them is where most failures begin.
“The Copy-Paste Trap
“Somewhere along the way, it became fashionable to study exemplars — companies like Haier, Amazon, or Gore — and copy their practices wholesale.
“Scrum teams! Holacracy! OKRs! Flat hierarchies!
“But here’s the uncomfortable truth: those practices work *because of the maturity level of the organizations using them*. A practice that represents sophisticated adaptive functioning is not going to deliver the same results in an organization that hasn’t developed the underlying capabilities to support it.
“Copying agile practices into an organization that lacks the developmental infrastructure to sustain them doesn’t create agility. It creates chaos.
“Before you deploy any transformation, you need to ask: **Where are we, really?**
“The 30% Premium Nobody’s Capturing
“Research consistently shows that organizations with real agility earn a 30% premium on returns compared to their less agile peers. Yet only about 20% of organizations actually achieve genuine agility.
“Why the gap?
“Because most organizations treat agility as a practice to adopt rather than a capacity to develop. They try to bolt on behaviors without building the underlying maturity to sustain them.
“The result is fragile. Agility that isn’t rooted in genuine organizational maturity doesn’t survive contact with real disruption. It collapses under pressure.
“A Different Approach
“The organizations that successfully transform share one habit: **they diagnose before they deploy**.
“They invest time understanding where their organization actually sits — what capabilities are strong, what are weak, what developmental work needs to happen before the next step can land.
“This isn’t a lengthy consultant exercise. It’s a disciplined practice of honest self-assessment.
“From that diagnosis, the path forward becomes clear: either you do the foundational developmental work to build capacity (the “start from scratch” path), or you build incrementally on what exists (the “next step” path).
“Both paths can succeed. But they require different strategies, different timelines, and different expectations.
“The failure happens when you pick the wrong path for where you actually are.”
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I can help you not only identify where you are, but also offer a way forward to get you on the path to where you need to go.
Call me on 083 654 6480 or set up time in my diary.