Why execution is now the real transformation battleground
More than 170 senior leaders gathered at Sullivan & Stanley's annual leadership summit, The Event Horizon, to examine why transformation ambition so rarely translates into measurable outcomes. Four panellists with decades of frontline experience across retail, healthcare, financial services and government services reached a consistent conclusion: strategy is not the problem. Execution is.
Organisations are losing an average of 27% of their expected transformation value not through poor strategy or lack of funding, but through an inability to execute effectively. The summit explored where that value goes and what it takes to stop the leak.
Key terms defined
Value leakage: the gap between the transformation value an organisation plans to deliver and what it realises. Sullivan & Stanley's Intelligent Enterprise research puts this at an average of 27p in every £1 invested.
Execution gap: the disconnect between leadership confidence in strategy and the organisation's capability to deliver it. Research with 200 UK C-suite leaders found that over 90% of leaders are confident their strategy is understood across the business, yet only 7% of organisations consistently capture full transformation value.
Execution Intelligence: The capability to select and configure the delivery model that fits the organisation's culture, outcomes and context, rather than defaulting to what is popular or what worked elsewhere.
AI pilot purgatory: a pattern identified in Sullivan & Stanley's research where 42.5% of organisations are stuck experimenting with AI without progressing to scaled value capture. Only 15.5% of leaders report having scaled AI successfully.
We gathered more than 170 senior leaders gathered at CodeNode recently for The Event Horizon for Leaders – Sullivan & Stanley’s annual leadership summit exploring one of the defining challenges facing organisations today: why transformation ambition so often fails to translate into measurable outcomes.
The evening brought together executives from across technology, operations, customer experience and enterprise transformation for a candid discussion about value leakage, execution discipline, AI adoption and the growing human challenge sitting at the heart of transformation.
At the centre of the evening was a panel discussion hosted by Jane Bates, long-term strategic adviosor to S&S and Founder of the Koru Collective, featuring:
- Helen Bliss, Transformation Director with senior transformation leadership roles at Nest Pensions, Ocado, Guide Dogs and Wilko
- Paul Cooper, Chief Technology Officer at Serco UK & Europe
- Dan Eddie, Customer Operations Director at AXA Health
- Martin Cross, CEO at Connect
Collectively, the panel brought decades of frontline transformation experience spanning retail, healthcare, financial services, government services and customer operations.
And while the organisations, sectors and transformation agendas varied, the themes that emerged were remarkably consistent.
The panel at a glance
| Theme | Key insight | Who raised it |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy vs execution | Strategy without an execution plan is a list of things you wish would happen | Helen Bliss |
| AI adoption | Some AI vendors report failure rates of up to 85% beyond proof-of-concept | Martin Cross |
| Incremental scaling | Starting with 3 FAQs and 7 AI emails before iterating to scale | Dan Eddie |
| Human dimension | Transformation is a profoundly human endeavour | Andy Haley |
| Leadership alignment | Fractures at board level make the whole organisation work against itself | Paul Cooper |
| Psychological safety | Difficult conversations need to happen in the room and often aren't | Helen Bliss |
The strategy isn’t the problem anymore
One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was that most organisations do not suffer from a lack of strategic ambition. The issue is what happens afterwards.
Opening the session, Jane Bates referenced Sullivan & Stanley’s recent Intelligent Enterprise research, which found that while more than 90% of leaders believe their strategy is understood across the business, only 7% of organisations consistently realise the full value of transformation initiatives. On average, organisations lose 27% of expected value between ambition and execution.¹
Helen Bliss immediately brought that challenge into sharp focus.
“When you have a strategy that’s written down in a slide deck or in a boardroom… without an execution plan, it’s literally a list of things you wish would happen.”
Her reflections landed because they spoke to a reality many leaders in the room recognised instantly: transformation often fails not because organisations choose the wrong priorities, but because they underestimate the operational complexity required to deliver them.
Helen spoke openly about the importance of understanding interdependencies across programmes, functions and technology decisions, particularly in large-scale enterprise transformation.
“Sometimes,” she explained, “the foundational work isn’t the exciting work.” But without addressing core issues around platforms, operating models or data quality first, organisations end up “building on the cracks”.
AI is accelerating the pressure, not removing it
AI featured heavily throughout the evening, but notably, the conversation was far more grounded than the typical “AI will solve everything” narrative dominating many boardrooms.
Martin Cross described a market where organisations are rushing into pilots without properly understanding the problem they are trying to solve.
“AI is an enabling technology. It’s not the answer.”
Drawing on Connect’s work leading customer experience transformation programmes, Cross shared that some AI vendors are seeing failure rates of up to 85% when organisations attempt to move beyond proof-of-concept stages.²
The reasons were familiar:
- Unclear use cases
- Poor process understanding
- Weak data foundations
- Lack of operational ownership
- Middle management resistance
- Insufficient frontline engagement
One of the clearest practical examples came from Dan Eddie, who shared how his previous organisation, Simplyhealth, introduced AI gradually inside customer operations.
Rather than launching a large-scale transformation initiative, the business started with just three FAQs and seven AI-assisted customer emails in week one. From there, the organisation iterated carefully, scaling based on operational confidence and measurable outcomes.
The story resonated strongly because it contrasted sharply with the “big bang” transformation mindset that still dominates many enterprises.
“Transformation is now a profoundly human endeavour”
While technology remained a major topic, the discussion repeatedly returned to people.
In one of the evening’s defining moments, Andy Haley described transformation as:
“a profoundly human endeavour.”
That sentiment carried through almost every panel contribution.
Dan Eddie spoke about the importance of helping employees understand why AI is being introduced and how it supports both organisational purpose and personal growth.
At Simplyhealth, AI wasn’t framed as workforce replacement. Instead, it was introduced as a way of “accentuating the value of the human” by removing repetitive tasks and allowing employees to focus on more complex, meaningful customer interactions.
He also highlighted the importance of business readiness, not simply deploying technology, but preparing people emotionally and operationally for change.
“Business readiness… is the most critical thing.”
That point clearly struck a chord with the audience. Throughout the evening’s live polling, one theme repeatedly surfaced: leaders believe the biggest challenge ahead is not necessarily technology adoption, but leading people confidently through continuous change.
The organisations pulling ahead are the ones willing to challenge themselves
Another recurring theme was the need for honesty inside leadership teams.
Helen Bliss spoke candidly about the difficulty of creating cultures where difficult conversations happen early enough to change outcomes.
“The conversation needs to happen in the room, and it’s just not happening.”
Her comments around radical candour, psychological safety and “whites of the eyes conversations” captured something many transformation leaders experience privately but discuss too rarely in public: organisations often know where problems exist long before they formally acknowledge them.
Paul Cooper expanded on this from a leadership perspective, arguing that executive alignment itself is often underestimated as a transformation dependency.
“If there’s fractures within your boardroom… you’re already making the job harder because the organisation’s working against itself.”
It was a powerful reminder that value leakage rarely starts at delivery level. More often, it begins with competing priorities, inconsistent messaging and unresolved tensions at the top of the organisation.
The mood in the room
What made the panel particularly compelling was how practical and honest the discussion felt.
No one claimed to have fully solved transformation. In fact, several panellists openly acknowledged how difficult the challenge has become. But there was also optimism. A sense that organisations willing to rethink execution, embrace adaptability and invest properly in people still have a huge opportunity to pull ahead.
And perhaps that was the real takeaway from the evening.
The future advantage won’t belong to organisations with the most ambitious transformation plans. It will belong to those best able to execute, adapt and bring people with them when conditions change.
¹Sullivan & Stanley, The Intelligent Enterprise Report, 2026
²RAND Corporation, The Root Causes of Failure for Artificial Intelligence Projects and How They Can Succeed, 2024
Ricky Wallace
Head of Marketing