With AI reshaping the technology landscape at unprecedented speed, IT leaders face a critical question: how do you drive meaningful transformation when the goalposts keep moving?

We'll be hosting a roundtable event on 5th November, led by John Lockett, a CIO with over 25 years of experience leading transformation across FTSE 100 organisations, including British Gas Transco and Serco, where we'll be delving into the topic of 'Transformation, AI and Automation at scale, CyberResilience & Strategic Delivery' to explore what it really takes to build resilience in today's fast-paced IT environment. John will be sharing practical tools and thought-provoking frameworks to help you assess where your organisation stands on resilience and strategic delivery.

This event is designed for CIOs, CTOs, and transformation leaders navigating the challenges of driving IT transformation in an AI-accelerated world. You can expect candid discussion and a direct approach to solving real problems, which will leave attendees in good standing when navigating transformation in an ever-changing environment.

Let's start at the beginning. How did you first move into driving enterprise-wide change?

It's an interesting story. I spent three years as Commercial Director at British Gas Transco, responsible for £3 billion worth of revenue, and every year, I'd be in the executive meetings listening to the IT function inform me of delivery delays, budget overruns, and de-scoping. I'd have to go to my customers and explain why I couldn't offer them services because IT had challenges.

After three years of this, the CFO said, "John, go and run IT. You know what good output looks like for IT delivery, transformation, and change. Go and fix it." So, I had a learning opportunity, and life has never been the same.

Large-scale change often encounters resistance. What strategies did you find most effective in bringing people along on the journey?

Open and transparent communication about why you're doing it and what you really want to achieve. But here's the critical part: finding out what people actually want is key to successful transformation. So, what do you really want? Sometimes, it's very hard to figure out, as lots of groups want lots of different things.

Too often, people focus on tactics rather than objectives. Someone will say, "I need to put SAP in" or "We need this platform." My response is always: What is it you actually want to do? Let me worry about the how. What's the outcome you're after?

When designing new operating models, what are the most common pitfalls leaders should avoid?

Determining what you are trying to fix and thinking it's one thing when actually it's something else. Culture also plays a big part, as does context, as one size does not fit all, so work out what's needed in your teams/organisation, do not do what others are doing, and work out what's right for you. Specifically, understanding what change the organisation is actually able to accept. I use a phrase: “tissue rejection” as you think this latest phenomenon would be great, but the organisation enables it to fail. Change management was not considered.

If people don't want the change, they will make it fail. They're very bright, capable, and love doing what they've always done because that's what's made them successful. So, they will absolutely make it fail if they aren’t bought in.

How do you overcome that?

Preparation, preparation, and preparation. Go around the loop multiple times, thinking about what you can actually do. Use your judgement: am I being too ambitious? Am I being too cautious? Can they actually do this?

It depends on the size of the transformation and what we used to call the "burning platform," how much you really need to change and how much the organisation recognises that need. However, the key principle remains: Spend more time planning than you think you need.

With so many organisations experimenting with AI, few achieve genuine business value. What separates success from wasted effort?

MIT recently said only 5% of AI projects have delivered value. 95% have delivered nothing.

The answer is the same as any transformation: preparation, culture, and people. IT is the easy bit, and it always has been. Over time, IT has become more complicated, but it’s also gotten easier to do things. It's all the things that have remained the same over 25 years, spend time on them, culture and people, and make that extra bit of effort to get it right in your context.

You've overseen operations during critical incidents. What key lessons did you take away from those experiences?

Speed, speed, speed. Jeremy Clarkson was right about that.

You have to make decisions quickly. The longer you stutter, the longer you're nervous about whether it's the right answer, the sooner it will become the wrong one. I learned that in 2005 when my data centre blew up. We were 30 yards from the Buncefield oil disaster. That experience framed my thinking for the next 20 years: speed counts, so move quickly.

What does speed look like in practice?

Again, context is important, as new startups and brick-and-mortar firms have different priorities. As a rule of thumb, be faster than your core competitors. A start could be to remove over-governance; projects are rife with it. People think all the risks are growing, but no, you need to take some risks because the rewards are worth it. Don't be stupid in the risks you take, but don't be too cautious either.

The problem is that IT functions get layered up over the years. Something happens in 2010, so they put in a process and governance to prevent it happening again. Then something happens in 2012, so they add another layer. By 2020, you've got so many processes to avoid things that will simply never happen again. The world's a different place since those processes were a necessity.

How do you balance speed with thorough preparation?

I'm driven by that famous Einstein quote: "If I had an hour to save the world, I'd spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it."

Preparation is absolutely crucial. With all this change and all the transformation work you do, you've really got to think hard before you kick anything off. But once you've done that preparation, you go as quickly as possible. Put people together, iterate through problems, move fast.

There's significant disruption happening right now: technological, economic, geopolitical. What should leaders prioritise?

Here's the thing: disruption is nothing new; it’s been happening consistently in my 25 years as a CIO.

The only difference between the dotcom boom, Y2K, and what's happening now with AI and automation is one thing: speed. I can do things so quickly compared to 25 years ago. That's the only real difference.

The business, change management and cultural issues are all the same. I’d suggest reading the GE IT strategy written in 2000, you'd honestly think it was written today, perhaps by AI, because the issues are so similar.

So, what should CIOs and transformation directors prioritise for 2026 and beyond? And what are you hoping attendees will take from your session?

It's context dependent. What a pharmaceutical company needs differs from what a mining company or government supplier needs. You've got to have the context of your specific business.

But across my 20 years of experience, I’d say there are universal standards:

• Try to move quickly.
• Think hard before you do anything, understand what you want, and bring people on board.
• Classify your projects to determine which ones are straightforward and which are complex. Which ones are quests, and which ones have you running around in the fog – stop those!
• Don’t forget to have good change management and work on the cultural journeys.

The fundamentals don't change. People are essentially the same; motivations are usually the same. Master those elements, and you'll succeed regardless of what new technology emerges.

I hope attendees receive the tools from the roundtable to review where they are, alongside a thought-provoking conversation, and the stimulus to think further about that.

If you’re interested in learning more about navigating the realities of enterprise-wide transformation, we still have a few spaces left for our breakfast roundtable session on Wednesday 5th of November at 8:30am. Just fill in the form here, and a member of our team will be in touch with further details.