Naviam

Richard Donaldson

Operational Trust Architect

After decades of investment in digital transformation across asset-intensive industries, organizations have learned a consistent and uncomfortable lesson: technology is rarely the only reason a transformation falls short. Bain & Company’s 2024 research found that 88% of transformations fail to achieve their original ambitions. In most cases, the issue is not the platform itself. It is whether the organization built the trust, alignment, and buy-in needed to actually change how work gets done.

Defining Success Before Building the System

In most failed transformations I’ve seen, the issue was not the platform. It was that the organization never fully aligned on what success actually looked like before the work began.

In a recent water utilities project, nearly half the total project effort was spent before system configuration began. That time went into understanding what each part of the business needed and where expectations diverged. Everyone will have their own version of what success looks like, and sometimes those versions are in conflict. Resolving that before technical work begins is not a delay. It is the work.

I have also seen the opposite. One rail transformation originally planned for nine months is now more than two years in and still ongoing. The people who originally defined the vision for the project left midway through, and over time, the organization lost alignment on what the transformation was actually meant to achieve. Once that happens, even good technology struggles to deliver results.

Trust Runs in Every Direction

Operational trust has to exist across the entire transformation. It is built between leadership and employees, between frontline teams and the technology they are being asked to use, and between the organization and the partners helping deliver the change.

​If a transformation leader tells me their organization is technically ready but organizationally unprepared, my answer is simple: they are not ready.

At the leadership level, trust comes from consistency. Long implementations evolve, priorities shift, and decisions change. But when leaders communicate openly about those changes and follow through on their commitments, teams stay aligned. When direction changes without explanation, trust erodes quickly.

Trust also matters between organizations and their implementation partners. I learned that early in my career while working with a client in the oil and gas sector. A senior operational manager challenged me directly: what could I possibly tell him about an industry he had worked in longer than I had been alive? The answer was simple. He knew the operation. I knew the platform. Together, we could build something neither of us could create alone.

Among frontline workers and field teams, trust is often more practical. Maintenance crews, technicians, and operational staff are regularly asked to take on additional steps during a transformation: more data entry, new workflows, and unfamiliar systems. Their willingness to engage depends on whether they believe the technology will actually help them do their jobs better. When systems create friction instead of reducing it, adoption problems usually follow.

When Technology Serves the Operation

In one hospitality environment, the transformation team simplified the workflow to its essential interaction: one tap to begin a task, one tap to mark it complete. Everything else — location, timing, assignment, and completion data — was captured automatically in the background.

The worker’s experience was simple and the organization still captured what it needed. Systems designed around real operational behavior rather than only around data collection are what distinguish technology that enables operations from technology that constrains them.

Whether the platform supports maintenance, inspections, compliance, or field operations, the principle is the same: the system should work for the people, not the other way around.

Designing for Where the Business Is Going

One of the biggest risks in a long transformation is assuming the organization you design for at the beginning will look the same by the time the project goes live. Often, it does not.

In several large implementations, I’ve seen workflows were carefully designed around operating models that no longer existed by deployment. The result was predictable: friction between what the system was built to do and what the business actually needed. That disconnect usually surfaces at the worst possible moment, when adoption and trust matter most.

The definition of success cannot be fixed at the start of a multi-year transformation and left untouched. Digital transformation is, in many ways, an exercise in aiming at a moving target. The organizations that handle it best build in the flexibility to adjust as the business evolves.

Building Trust When It Counts Most

In long transformations, trust starts to fade when people stop seeing progress. Skepticism grows, sponsors ask tougher questions, and support slowly erodes. That is why early wins matter so much. When organizations solve operational problems that have frustrated frontline teams for years, they build credibility and trust early in the process. People start to believe the transformation is going to improve how they actually work, not just generate more meetings and reporting.

The first 90 days of a transformation should be designed with that trust in mind. Teams on the ground need to be a part of the process early on. Those wins create the momentum needed to sustain the harder phases that follow.

Organizational Readiness Is the Precondition

If a transformation leader tells me their organization is technically ready but organizationally unprepared, my answer is simple: they are not ready.

Platform selection and implementation expertise both matter. But the organizations that consistently deliver on their transformation ambitions treat alignment, communication, and organizational readiness as seriously as the technology itself.

Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management research found that projects with excellent change management are approximately seven times more likely to meet their objectives than those with poor change management. In practice, that difference usually comes down to whether people understand the direction, believe in it, and stay engaged long enough for the transformation to take hold.

The organizations that do this well maintain a shared definition of success, create early wins, and build trust by consistently following through on their commitments over time.

Digital transformation is ultimately bigger than the technology behind it. Technology may enable the change, but operational trust is what makes the change stick.

Sources

Bain & Company 2024 — 88% of Business Transformations Fail to Achieve Their Original Ambitions: https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2024/88-of-business-transformations-fail-to-achieve-their-original-ambitions-those-that-succeed-avoid-overloading-top-talent/

Prosci Best Practices in Change Management (12th Edition, 2023): https://www.prosci.com/blog/the-correlation-between-change-management-and-project-success

Naviam — Maximo Application Suite: A Strategic Asset for Large-Scale Enterprises: https://www.naviam.io/resources/blog/maximo-application-suite-a-strategic-asset-for-large-scale-enterprises

Naviam — 10 Signs Your EAM System Is Holding Your Business Back: https://www.naviam.io/resources/blog/10-signs-your-eam-system-is-holding-your-business-back

Richard Donaldson is CEO of EMEA at Naviam, the world’s largest IBM Maximo enterprise asset management provider. With extensive experience leading digital transformation programs across utilities, transportation, rail, and oil and gas industries in Europe and beyond, he advises organizations on aligning people, processes, and technology to deliver lasting operational change.