What’s Driving Your Transformation... Technology or Leadership?

In boardrooms and Zoom calls around the world, three words are dominating the agenda: Innovation. Modernisation. Transformation. We hear them everywhere. But here’s the real question: Is your business truly equipped to deliver, embed, and sustain change, or just inspired by the idea of it?

Too often, digital transformation is mistaken for a tech upgrade. New platforms, shiny dashboards, revised KPIs. But the real challenge, and opportunity isn’t digital, it’s human.

Change Isn’t a Project. It’s a Lived Experience. Marc Fontaine, former Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Airbus, put it best in a Let’s Talk Transformation podcast hosted by Suzie Lewis:

“Digital transformation is about technology, business outcomes, and change management: the difficulty with ramping up change management is the human element.”

If you're driving or even supporting a Digital Transformation, ask yourself:

• Have we underestimated how hard change is for our people?
• Are we preparing teams emotionally and culturally—or just functionally?
• Are we empowering leaders to lead differently—or expecting old behaviours to drive new results?

AI Is Forcing Us to Rethink Leadership—Not Just Tools. In another engaging article from MIT Sloan Management Review, the authors argue that AI demands a new breed of leaders. Not just tech-literate, but emotionally intelligent—able to navigate ambiguity, build trust, and champion adaptability.

“Most organizations still focus on the technical aspect of AI implementation because their leadership structure does too.”

It’s a confronting truth. Many leadership teams are still wired for execution, not experimentation. For control, not curiosity. In a recent Harvard Business Review webinar, Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter shared this insight:

“AI has the power to transform leadership for the better—the key is in how leaders use it.”

They suggest that with AI taking on routine tasks, leaders can double down on what makes us uniquely human: empathy, strategic thinking, creativity. AI’s most valuable outcomes often can’t be measured in spreadsheets. They’re invisible, but deeply human. They create time for leaders to slow down, tune in, and truly lead. Because without human transformation, digital transformation is just surface-level change. Transformation isn’t something you launch. It’s something you live. The companies that thrive will be those who make change part of their DNA. Is yours one of them?

AI is dominating the agenda, and it isn’t just another tech trend, it’s the most disruptive force we’ve seen in the past 50 years. It challenges legacy thinking, rewrites job roles, and forces every part of the business to evolve. It’s not just a digital shift, but an organisational awakening. When paired with equally urgent drivers like sustainability, scalability, and market positioning, AI becomes more than a tool, it can be a true litmus test. Are you building a culture ready to adapt, or one clinging to what worked yesterday? Because the speed and scale of change AI demands will expose any cracks in leadership, alignment, or mindset.

So, the question becomes this: do you have the leadership in place to meet the moment with clarity, energy, and conviction, or are legacy behaviours holding your transformation back before it ever really begins?

At XPS, we work closely with Boards, ExCos, and private equity-backed firms to help them bridge that gap through designing strategies, building solutions, and forming teams capable of converting ambition into measurable, meaningful outcomes.