Transformation Isn't A Year-Long Initiative. It's A Decade-Long Commitment.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about enterprise transformation:

It's boring. It's slow. It requires politics. It requires patience. And it requires you to give a shit about something that won't show up on your performance review for three years.

That's not the story you hear. The story you hear is some CEO standing on stage talking about "digital transformation" or "agile transformation" like it's something you can download, install, and roll out across 50,000 employees in 18 months.

It doesn't work that way. And I've talked to enough people who've actually done real transformation work to know the difference between the story and the reality.

I recently talked to Wout Hermans, who leads Mural's Enterprise Transformation team in Europe. And what's interesting about his perspective is that he's not selling you transformation as a product. He's describing transformation as a discipline—something that takes time, requires the right leadership mindset, and fundamentally changes how a company operates.

And he's got scars from every job along the way to prove he's done it.

What Enterprise Transformation Actually Means

Most companies hear "transformation" and think about technology. They buy a new tool. They run a few training workshops. They check the box.

That's not transformation. That's modernization. And it almost never works.

Real transformation—the kind that actually sticks—is about changing how people think and work together. It's about taking an organization that's built around command-and-control decision-making and actually teaching people how to collaborate. How to iterate. How to fail and learn instead of failing and dying.

Wout put it this way: "Transformation can be many different things. For every client that looks a little bit different. Some companies are on a design transformation. They're teaching their whole company about design thinking. Others are on agile transformation, digital transformation."

So it's not one size fits all. But the underlying pattern is the same: You're trying to fundamentally change the operating system of how the organization works.

And here's where most companies fail: They think the tool is the transformation. It's not. The tool is just the medium. The transformation is in how people think.

The Death Knell Of Transformation: Focusing On The Resisters

OK so here's something Wout said that really stuck with me, because it goes against everything corporate culture consultants tell you:

"Don't focus too much on the people who are resistant and who don't want to comply with things. Change is scary, most people don't like change. So it's normal that people resist. Don't focus too much on them. Use the champions."

That's not what you hear in most transformation initiatives. Most transformation initiatives spend enormous energy trying to convince resisters. Running workshops. Sending emails. Trying to build the case for why change is good.

It's exhausting. It doesn't work. And it wastes the energy of the people who are actually excited about the change.

Wout's approach is completely different. He finds the people who are enthusiastic about the transformation and amplifies their voice. He uses them as proof that the change is possible. And as the champions start doing their new work—whether it's visual collaboration or design thinking or whatever the transformation is—they naturally demonstrate that it works.

The resisters eventually come around, not because anyone convinced them, but because the champions are already succeeding and the resisters look like they're stuck in the old way.

And here's the thing: Some people will never come around. And that's OK. The goal isn't to force everyone to change at the same speed. The goal is to reach a critical mass where change becomes the path of least resistance.

Why Talent Retention Is Actually Your Transformation Signal

Wout mentioned something that I think every executive should tattoo on their arm:

"If a company is not innovating enough or transforming enough or is old fashioned, younger generations just leave."

That's not speculation. That's not some consultant theory. That's observable reality. The best people—especially young people coming out of school with ideas and energy and the belief that things could be better—they will leave if a company is fundamentally stuck.

And when they leave, you've lost your best transformation candidates. You've lost the people who could actually lead change. And you're left with people who either don't care or who are too invested in the old way to actually change.

So if you want to know if your company needs transformation, don't run a strategic planning session. Don't survey your employees. Just look at who's leaving.

If you're losing young talent and you're losing people with fresh perspectives, that's not a recruitment problem. That's a transformation problem.

The Unsexy Reality Of How Change Actually Spreads

Here's what transformation looks like in reality:

You find the champions. You give them the tools and the methodology and the space to experiment. They run workshops using the new approach. They evangelize it within their sphere of influence. Other people see that it works and they want to try it. Word spreads. Over years—not months, years—the critical mass reaches a tipping point where the new way becomes easier than the old way.

And then, finally, you've got transformation.

But this takes time. Lots of time. Wout was clear about this: "Transformation is definitely something that is like, it's a long effort. It's not something that you will just do like, okay, 2020 is a transformation year. No, this is definitely something like multi-year if you wanna do some meaningful transformations."

Multi-year. Not multi-month. Multi-year.

Most organizations don't have the patience for that. They want to show results in 18 months. They want to be able to point to something and say, "Look, we transformed."

But the ones who actually succeed are the ones who say, "We're committing to this for five years. We're going to measure different things. And we're going to accept that the real benefits will show up over time."

That's not exciting. That's not something you can put in a press release. But that's what actually works.

Where Vision Comes In (And Where It Fails)

There's a tension in transformation between vision and pragmatism. You need both. But most organizations get the balance wrong.

Wout talked about leadership repeatedly stating the vision. Not just once. Repeatedly. "It's an important thing. We need to do something with it."

That repetition matters. Because people don't change their minds from one statement. They change from repeated exposure to a vision, combined with seeing people around them actually living it.

But here's where it fails: Most companies articulate a vision and then don't actually build the infrastructure for people to live it.

So the CEO says, "We're going to be more agile." And then the company still has annual budgeting cycles and approval processes that require three layers of sign-off and meetings that take months to schedule.

You can't have agile transformation in a company that's built on command-and-control processes. The processes have to change. The tools have to change. The incentives have to change.

That's the part most companies don't want to do, because it means powerful people have to give up power. It means control has to be distributed. It means trust has to replace command.

Why This Matters (Even If You're Not Running Enterprise Transformations)

You're probably not going to lead a company-wide transformation. Most people won't. But transformation happens at every scale.

Maybe you're trying to transform a team. Maybe you're trying to transform how a department works. Maybe you're trying to transform the culture of a single project.

The principles are the same:

First: Find the champions. Every group has people who are excited about change. Those are the people to invest in. Not the convinced people. Not the fence-sitters. The genuinely excited ones.

Second: Give them tools and space to experiment. Don't micromanage. Don't require approval for everything. Let them figure it out and learn along the way.

Third: Let results speak louder than words. The champions will demonstrate that the new way works. That's worth more than any presentation you could give.

Fourth: Prepare for it to take longer than you think. If you're trying to change how people think and work, that's not a six-month project. It's a three-year project minimum.

Fifth: Don't try to convert the resisters. Let them be. Focus your energy on the people who are ready to move.

The Uncomfortable Part

Here's what nobody wants to admit about transformation: It requires you to be willing to look stupid. To admit that the way you've been doing things is outdated. To let go of control.

Most executives can't do this. Because they've built their career on being the person with the answers. And transformation requires admitting that you don't have all the answers anymore.

Wout mentioned coming from a consulting background, working at IBM, working with big enterprises, and then pivoting to a startup because he was burned out on the pace and the politics of big organizations.

That takes courage. Because you're walking away from stability and prestige because you want something different.

And then at Mural, he found a way to combine the best parts—he gets to work with big transformation projects, but he's not trapped in the bureaucracy. He's facilitating from the outside, which gives him the perspective to see what's actually working and what's bullshit.

That perspective is rare. And that's why companies who bring in people like Wout—people who've seen what works at scale and who have the credibility to push back on the company's own constraints—are the ones who actually transform.

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Want The Full Story?

Listen to Yaniv Corem's conversation with Wout Hermans on The School of Innovation podcast. If you're dealing with any kind of transformation initiative—whether it's company-wide or just for your team—his perspective on what actually works is worth an hour of your time.

Because here's the thing about transformation: Everyone wants the results. Nobody wants to do the work. But the ones who are willing to do the multi-year, uncomfortable, political, unglamorous work of actually changing how people think—those are the ones who end up building organizations that can actually innovate.

Everything else is just reorganization with a new title.