Transformation only creates value when people support and implement the change in their daily work. Our guiding principle, Value = Strategy × People, illustrates that implementation is not just a matter of target images and structure, but also whether the transformation becomes relevant, credible, and manageable for those involved.

Engagement or activation means creating conditions under which leaders and employees connect with the change, take responsibility, and try out new things. Three elements particularly contribute to this:

• Community strengthens belonging and identity across team and department boundaries.
• Team is the central place where collaboration, learning, and performance occur in everyday work.
• Experience describes the concrete perception of the transformation—from orientation and participation to perceived effectiveness.

Community

The community refers to a larger social framework to which people feel they belong (or want to belong). It’s less about specific individuals and more about the social and cultural environment whose values people identify with. An indicator of how well this is going is Gallup’s Engagement Index, which shows that only 10% of employees have a high emotional attachment to their employer, and 77% do only the minimum required. This lack of connection and motivation is disastrous for companies. However, little systematic work is done to address this. Examples from other areas demonstrate what is possible. For instance, in sports, CrossFit and Hyrox have shown how to establish internationally desirable and successful brands and systems. The exercises themselves existed before, but linking them with events and a cool community has proven to be the key to success.

Team

Teams are the central place of organizational reality. They shape performance, collaboration, learning, and daily experiences within the company. In transformation initiatives, much depends on the team context: new behaviors are tried out there, routines are formed, and it is where it becomes clear whether the change can be integrated into daily work. At the same time, teams are often the operational units for task organization—especially with agile working methods and a focus on value streams. Teams allow skills to be combined, work to be meaningfully distributed, and mutual support to be organized. Making transformation effective also means systematically developing teams: with clarity about goals and roles, good working relationships, effective coordination, and routines for learning and reflection. Team development is not a side program but a prerequisite for implementation.

Experience

Many transformation programs invest heavily in design, control, and communication—and too little in the actual experience of those involved. This contributes to widespread transformation fatigue: people have already experienced many programs, whose consequences in daily life remained unclear or whose benefits were not visible. A good transformation experience does not aim to constantly “excite” people. It aims to connect orientation, participation, fairness, and feasibility—and to enable perceived effectiveness. This includes: a meaningful and honest story, realistic expectations about effort and learning curves, a safe space for questions, doubts, and feedback, visible progress, and formats where new behaviors can be practically tested. If the experience is positive, people stay engaged.

Development often takes place at the edge of the comfort zone. Therefore, a framework that enables learning without overwhelming people is especially important. When transformation is experienced as understandable, fair, and effective, the willingness to take responsibility and implement new things increases.

Ultimately, the fact that those involved perceive the transformation as appealing is a fundamental prerequisite for maximizing the value achieved from a transformation. (Value = Strategy x People).

The Transformation Framework describes the factors necessary for successful strategy implementation. For more information on the individual dimensions:

Orientation

Structure

People

Engagement

Action