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Rethinking Why Transformations Sustain or Don’t. Some transformations don’t just launch well—they hold. Years after the program banners come down and the steering committees dissolve, these organisations continue to make better decisions, move with greater clarity, and adapt without constantly re-architecting themselves. What’s striking is that these outcomes are rarely explained by superior technology alone.…
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Artificial intelligence is no longer scarce, experimental, or prohibitively expensive.In banking, access to AI has never been the constraint. What determines whether AI creates value—or quietly adds complexity—is how leaders choose to deploy it, govern it, and absorb the consequences of the change it introduces. Technology can scale decisions. It cannot make them. Why AI…
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It Fails in the Leadership Operating the System. When large transformation programmes stall, the explanation usually arrives quickly. The technology was complex.The timelines were aggressive.The vendor ecosystem was fragmented.The market shifted. All of these may be true. And yet, they are rarely the real reason transformation fails to sustain. Because technology does not decide how…
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In most large transformation programmes, the moment of launch is treated as an ending. The platform is live.The milestone is met.The press release is ready. Leadership moves on. And yet, in many of these organisations, nothing of substance has actually changed. Customers still experience friction.Teams revert to old workarounds.Decision-making remains slow, cautious, and siloed.The transformation,…
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Editor’s note:This essay examines a recurring pattern in banking transformations—where programs launch successfully but struggle to sustain meaningful change over time. It applies the leadership lens explored in Breaking the Legacy Code to the realities of regulated financial institutions. Across the industry, a significant number of digital transformation initiatives in banks fail to deliver lasting…