Leaders now come and go in under two years, and each handover resets the clock on work that was meant to endure. Organisations end up trapped in perpetual reinvention, rewarding the appearance of action over change that actually holds. The sharper question is whether, if the leader stepped away tomorrow, the system would still choose the change on its own. Drawing on Asda, Thames Water, Microsoft and NVIDIA, this piece shows how to build transformation that lives in the organisation rather than one person, and survives whoever happens to be in charge.

Most Agile adoptions don't fail because the method is wrong. They fail because the organisation around the team never changes. Budgets, sign-offs, governance, and reward structures still run on Waterfall logic, and capable people quietly revert to whatever the system actually rewards. This piece names that pattern, explains why it's so stubborn, and sets out the conditions that determine whether any transformation holds.