Transformation Is a Trust Problem
There’s a reason so many transformation programs stall out.
It’s rarely the tech.
Not the new stack. Not the tooling. Not even the frameworks.
It’s trust.
Transformation doesn’t fail because the roadmap was wrong.
It fails because people stop believing.
I’ve seen this up close—at Qantas, where we migrated the digital experience from a legacy platform to an API-first architecture.
And in financial services, where the weight of compliance and legacy systems means even small changes ripple wide.
And as a founder, where trust isn't a nice-to-have—it’s the whole runway.
The patterns are the same across scale and industry. New strategies are announced. Agile coaches are brought in. The tooling gets modernised.
But under the surface, a quieter system is still running:
Engineers don’t trust that leadership will stick with the change.
Designers don’t trust that their voice will be heard once the consultants leave.
Leadership doesn’t trust the team to deliver fast enough.
Teams don’t trust each other - not really.
And so, transformation becomes a game of optics.
Velocity replaces alignment. Jargon replaces clarity.
And eventually, people disengage—not because they don’t care, but because they’ve seen this movie before.
🛠 The Fix Isn’t Just a Framework
It’s tempting to solve these issues structurally: with rituals, reporting, team topologies.
And those matter.
But trust isn’t built by structure alone.
It’s built by how we show up.
In the small moments. In the hard conversations. In the weeks when the sprint demo falls flat.
At Qantas, we had to earn trust across silos: between product and technology, between leadership and teams, between roadmap and reality. That meant slowing down to listen when we wanted to ship. Clarifying purpose when outcomes were fuzzy. Saying “I don’t know” when that was the honest answer.
Sometimes, trust looks like progress.
Other times, it looks like patience.
🔄 Transformation Is Repetition
We often think of transformation as a launch. A moment. A “go-live.”
But real change is much quieter. And far more repetitive.
You have to say the same message fifty times—each time slightly different. You have to keep listening, keep adjusting, keep showing up long after the kickoff has passed.
It’s not glamorous. But it’s the work.
The real transformation happens not when the new system goes live—but when people start to feel safe using it. When they believe in it. When they believe in each other.
And belief, like trust, doesn’t scale easily.
But it does accumulate - when we treat transformation as emotional work, not just execution.
I’ve come to believe that digital transformation isn’t just about better platforms. It’s about better relationships.
Because systems don’t change until people do.
And people don’t change without trust.
Still thinking.