Rewired

Chapter 2Choose the right transformation “bite size”

Pick battles big enough to matter and small enough to win.

—Jonathan Kozol

Many companies set their digital and AI transformations up to struggle from the start by getting the scope of the change wrong. Some companies start too small, believing an incremental approach will lower risk. This is a mistake. Successful transformations need to change something meaningful in the business, where there is a noticeable amount of value at stake and the impact can be measured. You won't get far transforming a house by repainting the living room; you need to take on something much more substantial, like remodeling the kitchen.

Others, with the best of intentions, go too big too soon, and try to transform the whole company all at once. This is generally too disruptive, too expensive to do right, or too difficult to tackle as a first project, and usually fails. More commonly, companies spread bets and resources too thinly across an uncoordinated set of activities and initiatives. This results in a lot of activity but not much value.

The domain-based approach

The right approach is to identify a few important and self-contained domains in the business and rethink them completely. As many as 80% of successful interventions in a struggling digital transformation are based on re-anchoring the scope to drive a concerted effort against a well-defined domain.¹ Taking this approach starts with identifying what the domains are. A domain is a ...