This is session six of the bi-weekly Zoom series IRG runs with the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative. Its subject is driving transformation, and it moves from why transformation efforts fail to Kotter’s eight-step process for leading change, then puts participants to work on their own impact plan.
Key findings
- The starting statistic is blunt: 70 percent of all transformation efforts fail.
- Four reasons are given. They are based on old ways of working, they extract rather than create value, they rely on technology for the solution, and they are not human-centric.
- The session’s own claim is the counterpoint: transformation is about humans, and it is framed against colleague, customer, community and capital market value.
- The previous session’s holistic strategy is carried forward as five tests. A strategy should be future-oriented, based on abundance, integrative, imaginative and context savvy.
The eight steps, as IRG teaches them
Creating urgency means leveraging energy and never wasting a crisis, making it outside in and personal, and educating people around one version of the truth. Building the guiding coalition means volunteerism, a diverse many rather than a limited few, and no egos.
Forming the strategic vision starts with the business strategy, paints a picture that appeals to hearts, and gets integrated into strategic planning. Enlisting the volunteer army means finding supporters, unifying them behind a common goal, and making it a movement rather than a project.
Enabling broad action means leading by example at the top, equipping the coalition with new capabilities, and inspiring bottom-up ideas. Generating short-term wins means piloting, celebrating what works, providing proof, iterating the strategy, and working with lead markets and brands.
Sustaining acceleration means patience with momentum, not celebrating too early, and neuroplasticity. Instituting change means cascading horizontally and vertically, creating an ecosystem with influencers, and fostering a growth mindset.
How the session runs, and what comes after
The ninety minutes cover an introduction, the IRG marketing AI survey, IRG learning, practitioner learning, a coached breakout and a debrief. Heather Currier Hunt and Jill Cress appear as practitioner contributors.
The breakout question is personal to each participant’s own work: considering the impact plan they are developing, what their biggest transformation challenge will be.
The program calendar runs bi-weekly from February to May, through grounding, reimagining, focus, organizing and impact planning, and ends at Cannes in June with impact plans discussed and a champion voted for. Participants share a draft plan in six weeks and record a final video in seven.
Three optional sparring sessions are offered on set dates, with the invitation to email for a one-on-one if none of them work. The next session covers fostering interdependency, with Linda Booth Sweeney and Norman de Greve contributing.
Scope and limitations
The deck is session material for a closed cohort. The failure rate for transformations is quoted without a source on the slide, and the eight-step process is attributed to Kotter rather than derived from IRG’s own research.
Source
This page summarises Zoom Session 6: Focus – Strategic Transformation, by Institute for Real Growth (IRG), Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, 2025.