There’s a right order for digital transformation, and almost everyone gets it backwards. They start with the technology, the exciting new system, and bolt the people and processes on afterward. That order is why so many transformations fail. (See also Dutt Kalluri’s Mastering Digital Transformation) I led transformations at a national retailer for two decades, and now I ghostwrite books for technology leaders. The order that works is people, then process, then technology, the classic People, Process, Technology structure. When a leader starts with the shiny system, I already know who’s going to pay for it: the employees nobody asked.
The right order for digital transformation: people, process, technology. Almost everyone starts with the technology. That’s why almost everyone fails.Share on X
Why do people come first in a transformation?
Because a system nobody uses changes nothing. People have to understand and accept the change before the process or the technology can work. (See also Victoria Chemko on leading people through AI change)
From the podcast
Ben “The Automator” Christensen draws the same conclusion from the vendor side of the problem, on Leaders and Their Stories:
People come first, then processes, then technology, so the IT department should never lead a digital transformation project.Not because IT’s wrong, but because a department that installs technology will reach for technology first. That’s what it’s for.
You start with people, because people are who the transformation happens to. Before you touch a process or a system, you ask what this change means for each person involved. What happens to this position? Does this person need to be retrained for the new way of working? Are they retiring? Where do they go?
When you start with people, you find out who’s at risk, who needs support, and who will carry the change versus fight it. The people themselves can tell whether you’ve thought about what happens to them, and that decides whether they help you or resist you. As I describe in why digital transformations fail, resistance tracks almost perfectly with whether someone believes the change threatens their job.
Start with people, deal with that fear openly, and you defuse the biggest source of human resistance before it forms. Skip that step and you’ve made opponents of the people who have to run the new system every day, and they’ll find a hundred small ways to make sure it never works.
Starting with people also means being honest about the hard parts.
Some positions will change. Some will go away. Pretending otherwise destroys the trust the whole approach depends on. The leaders who handle this well tell people the truth. They retrain the ones who can move into the new world. They help the others land somewhere. And they treat everyone with enough respect that even the people leaving don’t sabotage the effort on the way out.
The company assumed it needed a new system, when what it needed was to stop doing something stupid.
What I can’t stand is the leader who tells everyone nothing is changing while the reorganization plan sits in a drawer. People find out. From that day forward nothing that leader says about the transformation gets believed, and the good employees, the ones with options, start looking for the door.
What does the process step examine?
Once you understand the people, you look at the process. What’s being done, step by step, and why? Take whatever you’re changing, payroll, accounting, manifesting, and understand the whole process before you touch any technology.
Sometimes you discover the process itself is just bad, and fixing the process solves the problem with no technology change at all. The company assumed it needed a new system, when what it needed was to stop doing something stupid.
I’ve watched organizations about to spend a fortune automating a process that shouldn’t have existed. The right answer was to delete three steps and skip the software entirely.
You can’t know that until you understand the process, and you’ll never understand the process if you started by buying a system. I tell executives the same thing every time: automate a broken process and you get a faster broken process with a maintenance contract attached, and your people get to learn a new interface for the same pointless work.
My take
Start with people, every time. Ask what happens to each person, then tell them the truth, including the parts that hurt. Then look hard at the process, because a lot of the time the fix is deleting a few steps, and no software is needed. Buy technology last. Automate a broken process and you get a faster broken process with a maintenance contract attached. The leader who hides the reorg plan in a drawer loses everyone’s trust for good.
Sometimes the company doesn’t need new technology. It needs to stop doing something stupid. You only find that out if you study the process before buying the system.Share on X
When does the technology finally come in?
Only after people and process do you get to the technology itself.
By now you know who’s affected and how, you know what the process needs to do, and you may have already fixed problems that would have made any new system fail. The technology slots into a foundation that’s ready for it. This is also where the component-by-component discipline from digital transformation is plumbing comes in: even once you reach the technology, you move one piece at a time instead of launching everything at once.
Transformations that start here, with the shiny new system, usually fail, and I have no sympathy for the vendors and consultants who keep selling them that way. They impose technology on people who were never considered and processes nobody understood, and then everyone wonders why adoption is terrible. The new system gets blamed, ripped out and replaced with another new system, and the cycle repeats, because nobody will admit that starting with the technology was the mistake. The employees who relearn their jobs twice pay for that stubbornness.
The order that earns trust
1. People
Who the change happens to
2. Process
What’s done, step by step
3. Technology
Slots into a ready foundation
Why does the people-first order earn trust?
The people-first order works because it earns trust. When you start with people, they see you’re trying to preserve their positions, or at least respect them and put them to work in the new world. They believe you have their interest at heart, because you demonstrably do: you started with them. That trust is the currency the entire transformation runs on. Announce a new system and hope everyone adapts, and you’ve spent it before the project starts.
That trust is what gets a transformation through the hard parts. Start with the technology and you have none of it. Start with the people and you have all of it. And winning that buy-in is itself a communication problem, the same one I describe in the boardroom and the server room speak different languages: you have to speak to people in terms of what the change means for them, not in terms of the technology you find exciting.
| Aspect | Technology first | People first |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | The exciting new system | What happens to each person |
| Employee reaction | Opponents who quietly make it fail | Fear addressed openly, resistance defused |
| Hard news | Reorg plan hidden in a drawer | Truth told; retrain some, help others land |
| Broken processes | Automated into a faster broken process | Often fixed by deleting steps, no software needed |
| Adoption | Terrible; system blamed, ripped out, replaced | Technology slots into a ready foundation |
| Trust | Spent before the project starts | The currency that carries the hard parts |
When I ghostwrite a transformation book, this ordering is often the executive’s hardest-won insight, because they usually learned it by getting it wrong first. The accurate account of a transformation that failed because it started with technology is worth more than any structure diagram, and it’s exactly what the next leader needs to hear. You can see how I work on the technology ghostwriting page.
If you’re a leader about to sign the purchase order for a new system, and you haven’t sat down with the people it touches or walked the process step by step, you aren’t ready to buy anything. Buying first feels like progress. It’s also how good employees end up blamed for a system that was set up to fail before they ever logged in, and that’s unfair to people who did nothing wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
People, then process, then technology. It’s the classic People, Process, Technology structure, and the order matters. Start with the people the change affects, then understand the process, then choose the technology. Most transformations start with the technology and bolt people and process on afterward, and that’s why they fail.
Because people are who the transformation happens to, and they can tell whether you’ve considered them. Starting with people means asking what happens to each position, who needs retraining, who’s retiring. Resistance tracks almost perfectly with whether people think the change threatens their job, so addressing that fear first defuses the biggest source of resistance.
Because sometimes the process itself is the problem, and fixing it solves everything with no technology change at all. Companies often assume they need a new system when they really need to stop doing something inefficient. Automating a broken process just gives you a faster broken process. You can’t know which it is unless you study the process first.
Because they impose technology on people who were never considered and processes nobody understood. Adoption is poor and the system doesn’t deliver, so the system gets blamed, ripped out, and replaced with another, and the cycle repeats. The technology was never the problem. Starting with it instead of with people and process was.
Because trust is the currency the whole effort runs on, and it carries the transformation through the hard parts. People extend it only when they see you’ve considered what the change means for them. Start with the technology and you have no trust; start with the people, and you have all of it.
Yes. I led transformations for two decades and ghostwrote three on the subject. The People, Process, Technology order is often a leader’s hardest-won insight, usually learned by getting it wrong first. You can see how I work on the technology ghostwriting page.
