About the book

Faced with a crisis-filled 2020, businesses had to respond almost instantaneously—shifting employees to remote work, repairing broken supply chains, and keeping pace with dramatically fluctuating customer demand. They were forced to adapt to a confluence of multiple disruptions inextricably linked to a longer-term, ongoing digital disruption.

The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization into an Uncertain Future shows that companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger. Companies that merely attempt to “weather the storm” until things go back to normal (or the next normal) miss an opportunity to thrive.

That’s because transformation isn’t a one-and-done event, but a continuous process of adapting to a volatile and uncertain environment. Drawing on five years of research into digital disruption—including a series of interviews with business leaders conducted during the COVID-19 crisis—this book provides a framework for understanding disruption and tools for navigating it. The Transformation Myth also offers insight into the leadership traits, business principles, technological infrastructure, and organizational building blocks essential for adapting to disruption, with examples from leading organizations.

The underlying message: Technology isn’t an end in itself. Rather, it enables the capabilities essential for surviving an uncertain future: nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality.