New study: Business Transformation in DACH 2026

Transformation is no longer simply a question of having the right strategy, technology, or methodology. Organizations today are dealing with changes that affect processes, structures, culture, leadership, technology, strategy, and often the business model at the same time.

The second edition of our Status Quo of Business Transformation in DACH study examines what happens between strategic ambition and operational reality. Based on 80 responses representing at least 52 companies and company groups, the 2026 results reveal a clear pattern:

Transformation rarely fails because organizations lack ambition. It loses impact when roles, resources, decisions, data, and new ways of working are not anchored clearly enough in everyday practice.

Solid results, but too little genuine conviction

At first glance, the overall assessment of transformation projects appears relatively solid. Participants rated project success at an average of 6.91 out of 10.

But the average alone does not tell the full story. The Project Success Net Promoter Score stands at -27.5. Only 10 percent of respondents can be classified as promoters, while 37.5 percent are detractors.

This means that many transformations are not perceived as complete failures. They deliver some results and may achieve important milestones. But they do not create enough genuine conviction among the people experiencing and shaping them.

A project can reach its formal objectives while still leaving employees unconvinced, leaders frustrated, and the organization unable to sustain the change. Transformation success must therefore be understood not only as delivery, but also as adoption, credibility, and the ability to continue creating impact after the official project phase ends.

The real bottleneck is the anchoring gap

Visible top management sponsorship remains one of the strongest-rated success factors in the study. Its NPS reaches 28.7. However, the picture changes significantly when looking at operational implementation:

• Clear roles and resources: -38.8
• Anchoring change in everyday practice: -36.2
• Timely decisions: -31.2
• Cross-functional ownership: -22.5
• Communication of KPI development: -20.4

The problem is therefore not necessarily a lack of executive attention. The problem is translating that attention into an organization capable of acting.

A transformation may have a powerful vision and a committed executive sponsor. But unless people know who decides, who owns delivery, which resources are available, and how conflicts are resolved, momentum quickly disappears.

Strategic commitment is visible at the top, but it does not consistently become operational clarity throughout the organization.

Executive sponsorship is necessary, but not sufficient. Its impact only materializes when it produces clear mandates, decision-making authority, resources, and accountability.

Scaling is more difficult than operating

The study also shows that the most difficult phase of transformation is not necessarily steady-state operation. The Project Success NPS differs strongly by project phase:

• Pilot or proof of concept: -57.1
• Scale-up or rollout: -40.7
• Run or operations: -7.7

Many organizations can generate ideas, launch pilots, and demonstrate initial potential. The real challenge begins when a promising concept must be transferred into the wider organization.

Scaling introduces new dependencies. More stakeholders become involved. Existing processes, systems, budgets, roles, and decision paths begin to matter. What worked within a protected project environment must suddenly work under real organizational conditions.

Transformation therefore needs dedicated scale-up governance. Organizations need explicit criteria for moving from pilot to rollout: ownership, committed resources, resolved dependencies, decision rights, adoption measures, and clear stop or redesign criteria.

Matrix organizations experience particularly high friction

Organizational form also influences how transformation is experienced. Matrix organizations record a Project Success NPS of -46.2, compared with -28.6 in line organizations and -10.5 in hybrid organizations.

Matrix structures create valuable connections across functions, markets, business units, and capabilities. But they can also produce unclear mandates, competing priorities, and slow decision-making. Transformation intensifies these tensions because it often crosses several organizational boundaries at once.

The issue is not the matrix itself. The issue is whether the organization has mechanisms that make cross-functional work actionable: explicit decision rights, shared priorities, conflict-resolution mechanisms, transparent resource commitments, and joint ownership.

Business-model transformation remains the hardest challenge

The 2026 transformation agenda is highly multidimensional. Organizational transformation is the most frequently mentioned category, followed by strategic, cultural, technological, and process-related change.

The most critical results occur in business-model transformation. These projects achieve an average success rating of 6.47 and a Project Success NPS of -52.9.

Business-model transformation requires an organization to reconsider how it creates, delivers, and captures value. This affects customer value, market positioning, commercial logic, capabilities, organizational structure, leadership priorities, investment decisions, culture, and identity simultaneously.

It cannot be treated as an innovation workshop followed by an implementation project. It requires coordinated changes to strategy, governance, operations, and organizational behavior.

Collective Intelligence and AI provide stability

The combined use of Collective Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence remains a meaningful success factor.

Projects using both CI and AI achieve an average project success of 7.37 and a Project Success NPS of -10.5. Projects using neither achieve an average of 6.55 and an NPS of -36.4. The negative NPS is therefore approximately 3.5 times smaller when CI and AI are combined.

Artificial Intelligence can help organizations analyze complexity, identify patterns, accelerate knowledge work, and simulate possible decisions. Collective Intelligence brings together perspectives, contextual knowledge, practical experience, and the ability to build shared ownership.

Used together, they can improve both the quality and acceptance of transformation decisions. But tools alone are not enough. Impact emerges when CI and AI are embedded within clear governance, high-quality data, structured feedback loops, decision processes, measurable adoption, defined accountability, and continuous learning.

The central question is not simply whether an organization uses AI. It is how human and artificial intelligence are connected to the way the organization learns, decides, and acts.

KPIs must steer transformation, not merely report it

Projects with three to five core KPIs and clear owners perform better than projects without such a structure. The difference becomes considerably stronger when projects combine leading and lagging indicators.

Projects using both achieve an average success of 7.41 and a Project Success NPS of -10.3. Projects without both achieve an average of 6.63 and an NPS of -37.3.

Lagging indicators tell an organization what has already happened. Leading indicators provide information about whether the behaviors, capabilities, and conditions required for future success are developing.

KPIs become valuable when they trigger conversations, prioritization, learning, and decisions. Otherwise, they remain reporting instruments that describe the past without changing the future.

The everyday obstacles are remarkably concrete

The open-ended responses provide an important reality check. The most frequently mentioned obstacles were data, IT, tools and integration, followed by acceptance and enablement, resources and prioritization, roles and decisions, and communication.

Transformations slow down because systems cannot exchange data, teams lack capacity, decision paths are unclear, employees do not understand how a new approach affects their work, and line responsibilities compete with project priorities.

Culture matters, but culture becomes visible through everyday systems and behaviors. An organization that wants more ownership must clarify what people are allowed to decide. An organization that wants greater collaboration must create joint responsibilities and shared goals.

What effective transformation looks like in practice

Respondents did not primarily identify large-scale frameworks as the most helpful forms of support. They highlighted concrete working artifacts:

• KPI boards and monitoring formats
• Business cases
• Decision formats and governance routines
• SOPs, checklists, and documentation
• Roadmaps, workshops, and review cadences

These tools work because they make transformation visible and repeatable. The lesson is not that every transformation needs more templates. It is that transformation needs an operational infrastructure that converts ambition into coordinated action.

Six priorities for transformation leaders

1. Build a Transformation Operating System. Connect vision, roles, decision rights, KPI ownership, review cadences, feedback, and adoption into a coherent system.
2. Create explicit scale-up governance. Define gates, resources, owners, and success criteria for the transition from pilot to rollout.
3. Turn KPIs into a steering mechanism. Use a small number of owned indicators that combine outcomes with leading signals and trigger real decisions.
4. Strengthen middle management. Provide middle managers with capacity, mandates, decision-making latitude, and targeted support.
5. Embed Collective Intelligence and AI. Connect both to governance, data, feedback, learning, adoption, and decision-making.
6. Make communication part of transformation steering. Clarify continuously what has been achieved, what has changed, which decisions are pending, and what happens next.

From transformation initiatives to organizational capability

The most important conclusion from the 2026 findings is that transformation needs fewer disconnected activities and a stronger operating system for change.

Organizations do not become more transformational by launching more initiatives. They become more capable of transformation when they learn to repeatedly connect strategy with decisions, roles, data, learning, and everyday behavior.

Transformation becomes successful when change is no longer managed as an exceptional project, but embedded as an organizational capability.

The full report was conducted by Ricardo dos Santos Miquelino with scientific support from Prof. Dr. Katharina-Maria Rehfeld of IU International University of Applied Sciences.

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