The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places…
Plutarch, Theseus 23.1 (Dryden translation, rev. Clough)
Changing the planks while at sea
As its planks are replaced, what makes it the same ship? For organisations the question is practical. People, technology, processes and structures change, sometimes beyond recognition, and leaders have to decide what must endure and what has become an obstacle.
Organisations also rarely get to bring the ship ashore. They change their planks while sailing. And the condition of a plank is only part of the problem: how it joins the others, the load it carries and the order in which it can safely come out matter as much. Stronger timber fitted without that understanding can still weaken the vessel.
Every intervention changes something. Its significance lies in what it does to the whole: what the enterprise can do, and whether it can keep doing it. A programme can finish its work with that question still open.
Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, put it this way:
"Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organisation thinks, the way it responds, and the way it leads."
Lou Gerstner, quoted in Beyond Change Management
My own definition places that change within the organisation's continuing evolution:
Every organisation evolves in relation to its environment, internal and external, whether it intends to or not. Enterprise transformation is the deliberate stewardship of that evolution: choosing what changes, what endures and in what order.
Kiran Goparaju
The three inseparable aspects
I represent the relationship as Borromean rings: the three hold together as a whole, yet no two are linked directly. Remove any one and the other two come apart. The ship is about continuity over time; the rings are about what has to stay connected while it happens.
Strategy sets purpose and direction. What outcomes matter, for whom, and what will we stop doing to pursue them?
Organisation determines whether we can act on it. That means capabilities, resources and working relationships, but also whether decisions can be made where the knowledge sits, and whether processes, technology and incentives point the same way.
Innovation finds out what else is possible. Which assumptions should we test before committing more widely?
Each shapes the others. A desired route may be beyond the vessel's current capability. An experiment may reveal a better one, and experience underway may call the destination itself into question.
Where do delivery and feedback fit? I don't treat them as further rings. They are what keeps the three in contact. Delivery turns choices about direction, capability and possibility into changes the organisation can use. Feedback carries what those changes reveal into the next round of choices. When either weakens, the rings don't fall apart at once. They drift, each acting on assumptions the others have already abandoned. Keeping both working is a leadership responsibility.
When one ring drops out
Without innovation, strategy and organisation lose what connected them: the strategy keeps restating its ambitions while the organisation refines how it already works, and nothing tests whether either is still right. Without organisation, strategy and innovation drift apart: pilots succeed and never scale, and the strategy describes a future nobody is equipped to build. Without strategy, organisation and innovation each improve something, but no one can say what the improvements add up to.
The specialists involved usually bring the expertise needed. The trouble starts when each works independently, with its own idea of what the organisation needs to become and its own measures of success, often written into its contract. A strategy depends on capabilities nobody is funded to build. A new system speeds up one activity and creates work elsewhere. A restructuring redraws reporting lines and leaves decision rights and incentives untouched. Each initiative meets its objectives while the enterprise is left poorly equipped for what comes next. We have replaced the planks, but have we improved the ship?
Answering that takes an understanding of the organisation as a whole: how work gets done, how information travels, where decisions sit and how value is created with customers and partners. It also takes attention to what formal designs miss, such as the experienced colleague who resolves exceptions or the trust that makes a hard decision possible. Some of these arrangements need to change. Others are holding the organisation together, and leaders need to know which is which before dismantling anything.
A seaworthy organisation at every stage
Not every change is of the same kind. Continuous improvement makes existing activities work better. A step change alters how the enterprise creates and delivers value. Adaptive capability lets it notice shifting conditions and respond, repeatedly, without waiting for a programme to prompt it. The stewardship covers all three, and each asks something different of leaders. Repairing a worn plank keeps the ship sailing as it does today. Redesigning the hull makes a different voyage possible. A crew that can inspect and repair the vessel itself keeps it at sea once the shipwrights, the partners and specialists brought in for the work, have gone.
Small changes can add up to a fundamental shift, and sometimes a major intervention is unavoidable because the existing configuration can no longer carry the organisation's ambitions. Either way, every programme and project is a chance to leave the organisation stronger than it found it. That does not make every project transformational, nor justify expanding its scope.
Sequencing the transition
An organisation cannot operate in a design that exists only on paper. It has to keep working through every stage between here and there. A new responsibility, devised in restructuring, needs authority and capacity behind it. A system due for retirement may be propping up dependencies nobody has recorded. Remove an old arrangement before its replacement works and the organisation may find it cannot meet its commitments.
So the sequence matters as much as the design. Each transition should leave the enterprise able to operate for as long as the next step takes, and should make the step after it possible. The biologist Stuart Kauffman called this the adjacent possible: everything one step away from what already exists. For an organisation, what is within reach depends on the capabilities it has, how much change people can absorb alongside their day jobs and which dependencies must be resolved first. Some changes are worth making mainly because they create room for the next.
That forces choices about what to defer or stop. A portfolio that keeps drawing on the same few people can damage current operations and future capability at the same time. The people running the business should shape these choices from the start, because they will live with the result and realise most of its value.
Budgets, deadlines, accountable owners and a clear definition of done are still needed. The organisation's need to adapt simply carries on after the work closes.
Leadership, shared purpose and the reality of change
People need to understand why the organisation is changing and what that means for them in practice. A compelling account of the future helps, but everyday decisions settle whether it is believed. If leaders call for collaboration while budgets and rewards set departments against each other, established behaviour will win.
People also need honest answers about their own futures: how their roles will change, which skills will matter and what support they will get. Uncertainty and loss are part of transformation itself, so they have to be dealt with in how it is designed and run.
I put less weight on alignment than most writing on this subject. Teams can pursue different, even divergent, objectives provided they share an understanding of what the organisation is for and how their work contributes to it. That is empowerment rather than delegation. Decisions move to where the knowledge sits, with clear boundaries, the information needed to make them well and a way to resolve competing priorities. Oversight belongs where the consequences reach further.
Feedback has to travel up, down and sideways. Leadership intent must reach the people doing the work, operational reality must reach leaders before it is softened beyond use, and teams need to hear from each other where their work meets.
Knowing whether the changes are worthwhile
Counting replaced planks tells us what work has been done. It says little about whether the ship is more reliable or can now reach places it could not before. Outputs show what has been delivered. Outcomes show what has changed for customers, colleagues or operations. Impact, over a longer period, shows whether those changes serve the wider ambition.
The expected relationship should be explicit: if we make this intervention, what do we expect to improve, and why? What evidence would lead us to continue, adapt or stop?
Value often emerges after a programme closes, through the combined effect of several investments and operational decisions. Customers experience the service as a whole, not according to our programme boundaries. Measurement and ownership therefore have to continue into operations, accepting that markets and competitors also shape results. The point is to understand how our choices contribute and to make better ones next time.
Putting this perspective to work
I developed three connected frameworks to support the deliberate stewardship of an enterprise's evolution. The Value Management Framework establishes what value means in context and connects strategic intent with evidence from idea to impact, including value realised in operations. The Transformation Delivery Framework connects roles, planning, governance and feedback so that change can be delivered and adjusted coherently. Panta Rhei addresses organisation and operating model design through the movement of work, information, decisions and other flows, shaping workable transition states. Together, they help leaders judge which changes are worthwhile, organise their delivery and keep the enterprise capable of operating and adapting throughout.
I also developed a tool, the Transformation Canvas to make visible the relationships between the activities, outputs, processes, systems and teams involved in creating value, the impediments between them and the interventions worth considering.
For a leadership team, I would begin with three questions
- What must our organisation become capable of doing, and what must we preserve along the way?
- Which parts and relationships need to change, in what sequence, while we continue to operate?
- What evidence will tell us that each change improves our ability to fulfil our purpose?
The ship asks what persists while everything is replaced. The rings ask what must stay connected while that happens. A transformation that cannot answer both has replaced planks, and counted them.