In a world of constant pressure to “move fast,” the art of organisational transformation has never been more critical, or more complex. Kristina Wright, a seasoned transformation leader who led critical transformations at Vestas, OX2 and Maersk, among many others, offers a pragmatic, structured approach to leading change that balances urgency with long-term sustainability. In the conversation with Margaret Jaouadi, Kristina Wright, drawing on her extensive experience across global organisations, emphasises that successful transformation isn’t about chasing the latest trends or delivering instant results; it’s about thoughtful orchestration, data-driven decisions, and building a resilient operating model.
Her recently published book, One Village at a Time, captures this philosophy, illustrating that meaningful change is best achieved incrementally, with transparent governance and deep respect for people and culture.
Kristina Wright’s framework revolves around six key pillars: people and culture, governance, organisation, process, performance management, and data, anchored in strong business-led initiatives supported by IT. She stresses that skipping foundational steps in any of these areas, or succumbing to hype-driven initiatives like AI “frenzies,” can lead to costly missteps and organisational fatigue. Her analogy of treating each pillar as a “village” demonstrates the importance of pacing, sequencing, and harmonising efforts so the entire system works in concert.
For transformation leaders, Kristina’s approach offers both a mindset and a methodology. She encourages leaders to focus on the data that drives insight, empower the right people to make decisions, and cultivate healthy conflict as a catalyst for innovation rather than a roadblock. She cautions against over-reliance on external consultants to lead transformation, advocating instead for internal ownership, structured governance, and clear accountability.
Special thanks go to David Howells, CEO of Pacific International Executive Search, for introducing Kristina Wright to Margaret Jaouadi.
Margaret Jaouadi
Welcome, Kristina. Can you talk us through your career journey, highlighting your expertise in driving business transformation?
Kristina Wright
The red thread throughout my career has been projects, change, and transformation, usually cutting across multiple parts of a business and, these days, almost always with digital touchpoints.
I spent over ten years in Australia running my own business. Consulting brought me back to Europe in 2010, where I joined a global industrial company in the middle of a company-wide transformation. We built an end-to-end operating model that connected R&D, operations, service, and the commercial organisation, moving from siloed functions to one system. My value wasn’t being the technical expert; it was getting people to speak the same language. Are we even talking about the same “potato”, and do we mean mash or boil? That kind of clarity became a recipe for execution.
From there, I moved to a large, complex enterprise in global logistics. There was no shortage of budget or ideas, just too many parallel initiatives delivering too little value. I helped narrow the portfolio and sequence the work. As the strategy shifted toward a more integrated, digitised business, I was lucky enough to be part of a team that reshaped process taxonomies and products. Hence, customers had a single, coherent entry point.
I later led a global service-business transformation in energy: standardising platforms and processes worldwide and moving from many local tools and spreadsheets to one platform underpinning both commercial and operational execution, new processes, new organisation, new roles. It changed how people worked almost overnight.
After that, I stepped in as COO for a fast-growing clean-energy developer, scaling from a small home base to multiple markets. That meant standing up ERP and enterprise processes, defining HR foundations, and introducing performance management to support disciplined growth.
Across all of these roles, I’ve tended to stand in the eye of the storm, pragmatic to a fault, bringing structure where frustration is high, alignment missing and creating a clear way forward, without slowing down. That’s where I add the most value.
Eventually, I chose to go independent, which gave me the space to write or rather share my dos and don’ts in One Village at a Time and to focus on what I enjoy most: helping organisations navigate complex transformations with the right pacing, sequencing, and respect for people.
Margaret Jaouadi
Your book is called One Village at a Time: Real Lessons from the Grit, Chaos, and Wins of Leading Global Transformation. Why did you choose that title, and what does it say about the way leaders should think about tackling complex transformations?
Kristina Wright
The title actually came very naturally because it’s a phrase a colleague of mine used years ago during a really complex, chaotic change. We were trying to get R&D to communicate with operations, involve finance, and, more specifically, align design engineers with other teams that didn’t want to talk to each other. The divisions weren’t communicating, and it was counterproductive for the company and the outcomes we were trying to achieve.
At one point, my colleague said, “We’ll take them one village at a time.” I thought it was such a beautiful way of looking at change and transformation. In my book, which is a short, straight-to-the-point “pocketbook”, I focus on six pillars, which I think of as villages. You can’t tackle everything at once, but you need to work with each village according to its timing and strengths.
It’s like an orchestra: if one village is playing Taylor Swift, another is playing Beethoven, and a third is playing Metallica, it’s going to sound awful. But if you coordinate each one carefully, the result is harmonious, just as you intended.
That’s how I think about change. You take it one village at a time, but you never lose sight of all the villages. You manage them individually, aiming to bring them together in a way that benefits the entire organisation.
Margaret Jaouadi
Could you talk us through those pillars and share one or two practical ways a leader can immediately start applying them in their organisation?
Kristina Wright
The six pillars are critical because, in my experience, skipping any of them makes transformations far more painful and less effective, and you end up going back to fix what you didn’t do from the start. I like to think of it like assembling furniture from IKEA. You open the box, glance at the instruction manual, and think it looks easy. I don’t need the manual; I know better. Two hours later, you’re left with a handful of screws you’re not supposed to have, a piece of timber in your other hand, and a lot of frustration faced with a do-over. If only you had followed the instructions step by step, you would have been done. Change works the same way. The pillars are your instruction manual.
For instance, I recently collaborated with a client who had spent a year and a half developing digital and AI products that were simply unscalable. They jumped straight into building without considering the fundamentals, such as their data, organisation, processes, and capabilities. That’s a common mistake, and it leads to wasted effort, frustration, and organisational fatigue.
Here’s a brief overview of the six pillars:
- People and Culture: This goes beyond HR. It’s about understanding where you want your organisation to be in five years and what skills and capabilities you need. Who needs training, who needs to be redeployed, and what capabilities are missing? Culture is also key. Culture can eat strategy, digital initiatives, and AI for breakfast. Understanding how your organisation communicates and works across different teams or markets is crucial. Without a deliberate cultural journey, change will stagnate.
- Organisation and Governance: Governance is often considered dull, but without it, initiatives mushroom uncontrollably. You need a clear framework with decision rights, veto power, and oversight to ensure that your initiatives align with strategy and deliver real value rather than just interesting pet projects.
- Process Management: End-to-end process design is about understanding how processes connect. The handovers between processes are where inefficiencies, rework, and confusion often occur. Design your processes to clarify decision points, understand what can remain local, and ensure alignment with your organisation and data.
- Performance Management: Change programs require constant attention. Without linking KPIs to transformation goals, leaders tend to prioritise short-term results, leaving long-term initiatives under-resourced and neglected. Simple, clear performance targets for the next 12 months can keep change efforts on track without overcomplicating things, and they ensure that we have the same understanding of what good looks like.
- Data: Data is a strategic asset. Without strong data governance, scaling digital initiatives becomes almost impossible. You need to know where your data comes from, who can access and change it, and how it ties to your processes. Investing in data governance is a no-regret move—it sets up your organisation to scale, pivot, and make decisions at speed.
- Technology: Change must be business-led, not IT-led, but IT is your partner. You need them to help design a scalable technology landscape, minimise interfaces, and simplify systems. Technology should support your strategy, not complicate it.
Practical starting points: Leaders can immediately begin by asking two questions: Are we managing our data in a structured way, or is it scattered across pockets? Are our processes designed end-to-end to support our five-year strategy? These don’t require huge investments but create a foundation for scaling change and digital initiatives successfully.
Margaret Jaouadi
It all makes so much sense, and you explain it in a very structured way. One thing that stands out is the critical role of data. In my experience, data is what informs future decisions and gives real insight. For example, in our business, we might say that projects typically take three months, but the data shows some run two months while others run six or seven. Without examining that data, you can’t understand why some projects are delayed, which is necessary to improve the processes. How does proper data management feed into the six pillars, and what practical steps can leaders take to get started?
Kristina Wright
Unclean or unreliable data with AI on top is basically a horror movie waiting to happen. Think practically: even something as routine as financial reporting becomes complicated if data is scattered across multiple ERP systems, with inconsistent processes in different markets. You end up with teams pulling data into BI tools, exporting to Excel, reworking it, and feeding it back to reach the CFO’s desk.
If you have structured processes, governed data, and clear performance management, you can streamline this. Reports become trustworthy and available in minutes, enabling a seamless transition from descriptive to prescriptive and predictive insights. You can identify where numbers are off, take action to increase efforts or productivity, and pivot with confidence.
But it starts with focusing on one pillar at a time, because if your data isn’t aligned, you’ll always be off the musical sheet. Companies that get this right win more than ever, as the stakes are higher and the consequences of poor data management are immediate and visible.
When implementing data governance, you need a strong leader, someone who can stand as a peer to senior management and enforce the process. People will push back, especially high performers used to doing things their own way. Initially, it might slow them down, much like a top salesperson who takes ten extra minutes per quote. But over a few months, it becomes second nature. The efficiency gains across finance and the rest of the value chain are enormous.
The key is to quantify the impact. Show the business the cost of continuing the old way versus the benefits of proper data management. Empower your teams with the right tools and ensure they follow the steps. Change is hard at first, but it pays off, and it’s necessary for scalable, sustainable transformation.
Margaret Jaouadi
In a world where organisations are under constant pressure to move quickly, how can leaders strike a balance between urgency and the need for substantial, sustainable, lasting change?
Kristina Wright
So much change isn’t really lasting. We live in a world of instant gratification. Think about how we consume media: we don’t wait for a show on TV; we pick a movie instantly on an app. Companies have become susceptible to the same mindset. We want change to happen immediately so we can feel successful.
But don’t mistake velocity for progress. I’ve been brought into stalled projects, re-energised the team, and been hailed a hero. That’s important, but it doesn’t mean anything has truly been solved. Actual progress is about sustainable results, not just quick wins.
You can have teams sprinting every two weeks, designing new features, and innovating rapidly. But if you haven’t addressed your data, processes, organisation, governance, and culture, that work may not scale. You might see short-term results for a few people in a corner, but it won’t impact the business as a whole.
True transformation is a long game, usually three to five years. You do need milestones to communicate progress and maintain momentum, but you must do the careful planning, stitch up the “wounds,” and build a strong foundation. Skipping these steps might give a feeling of speed, but it will keep causing problems and slow you down in the long run.
Success is when the organisation actually uses the new ways of working, not when everything is perfect immediately. Along the way, you learn and adjust based on what truly matters. Speed for the sake of speed is like running red lights; it might feel thrilling, but it’s dangerous and ultimately counterproductive.
Margaret Jaouadi
You highlight hierarchy and conflict as essential parts of transformation. How do you understand hierarchy in the context of business transformation, and how can leaders embrace conflict as something healthy rather than disruptive?
Kristina Wright
In 2025, hierarchy almost feels like a dirty word, but I actually love hierarchy. Not the old-fashioned kind where a few people dictate everything, but a clear division of responsibility and accountability. In a transformation, not everyone has the same vote; otherwise, nothing moves. You need a seasoned leader at the top to oversee multiple initiatives, someone who can stand in the storm, keep focus, and make decisions when required.
Let me give you an example. We were in North America with a big team, fatigued after hours of calls. The product manager, who owned this go-live, was brilliant but not comfortable making the final decision to start cutover or not. We had data issues, which we knew would cause some problems Monday morning but on the other hand, delaying the cutover would have meant weeks or months of lost time. I called a time-out, spoke with the executive sponsor to brief them on the situation, and then returned to the product manager. I asked him, free of pressure, what he thought. He said we had to go ahead. I took five minutes to make the call, sharing the responsibility. That relieved him and allowed the team to focus on execution.
Hierarchy matters because it creates safety. People can bring their best without feeling they have to carry the weight alone. Conflict is healthy, too. If everyone says everything is fine, I worry. Real change involves passionate debate and disagreement. Let people be emotional or loud, but keep it professional. Allow them to vent and discuss openly, then move on. Respect differing viewpoints, clarify issues, and find ways to ease pain points where possible.
Of course, not everyone will get on board. At some point, you have to make the decision and move forward. You can’t please everyone. If you try, you end up with a transformation that doesn’t land, products that don’t scale, and people who are fatigued and frustrated. Healthy hierarchy and managed conflict create an environment where transformation and change can succeed.
Margaret Jaouadi
Transformation versus regular change: what separates organisations that truly transform, and when do you recommend taking that approach?
Kristina Wright
I think the word transformation is often misused; it’s like the new black. Companies feel they have to say they’re transforming, even if they’re really just changing. True transformation occurs when your business model undergoes a fundamental change. You’re doing things completely differently: new processes, new platforms, new skills, sometimes new roles. For example, when I led of program in a global Service organisation, we implemented a new platform, reorganised the company, and introduced new processes and skills. That was a real transformation because we were doing something entirely different.
Change, on the other hand, can also be impactful, but the operating model largely remains the same. It’s about continuous improvement, increasing speed, or optimising specific processes, not overhauling the entire business.
Transformation makes sense when your sector is being disrupted. Even if you’re a leader, technology or market changes may force you to rethink your business model. Take fintech, for example: you might currently lead your sector, but with AI drastically reducing the time it takes to deliver your services, cutting revenue unless you reimagine your offerings. You may need to redesign products, create new services, or add value in other ways. That’s when transformation is required to maintain your leadership position.
But don’t use the term transformation needlessly. Overusing it can create anxiety, a big wave that doesn’t exist. Many organisations benefit from a central point to oversee all actual change, providing governance and ensuring end-to-end alignment. Without that, improvements in one area might create problems downstream, budgets can spiral, and initiatives can mushroom without impact.
For true transformation, you need a plan and governance that guides both major initiatives and smaller change projects. That ensures alignment with strategy, disciplined prioritisation, and a structured investment approach. Without it, even well-intentioned change can end up fragmented and ineffective.
Margaret Jaouadi
AI is a hot topic and creates a fear of missing out among leaders. How can they distinguish between hype-driven initiatives and genuine opportunities where AI can accelerate real business outcomes?
Kristina Wright
I see this all the time. Management teams often feel pressure from boards or investors, prompting the CEO or CFO to ask, “Are we doing enough with AI?” That fear of missing out isn’t a strategy. It often leads to patchwork initiatives that won’t scale or deliver real value.
The first step is to take a deep breath and go one village at a time. Ask: What are we actually doing in the data space? What value do we imagine AI to bring? Do we understand our end-to-end process design? What moments really matter for our customers or operations? Take stock of the initiatives you already have. Often, executives feel they’re falling behind, but upon closer inspection, there’s already a long list of ongoing projects. You’re probably not as far behind as it feels.
It’s crucial to recognise the gap between the direction of AI and your business’s current standing. AI won’t magically solve problems; you need data, processes, and capabilities in place. Start by understanding the total sum of what you already have, build a prioritised backlog, and apply governance to ensure everything feeds your strategy.
For some companies, it makes sense to fund a small playground or pilot team to experiment with AI. That can be a safe way to explore without risking the business. Meanwhile, leaders should stay informed by reading, listening, networking, and understanding how AI tools can enhance knowledge sharing and internal speed.
The key is focusing on fundamentals first: understand your data, be clear on what you want to improve, rather than doing AI for the sake of AI, and understand your organisation and culture. Who it will impact and when. Once that foundation is solid, you can scale, pivot, and embed AI effectively. Then, you’re truly ahead of the game, not because you jumped on the trend, but because your business is ready to leverage it in a meaningful way.
Margaret Jaouadi
I think people need to hear that today. Leaders need permission to pause, investigate, and explore before jumping in, throwing money at the problem, or hiring expensive consultants who might not even understand the context. Often, the people on the ground, the ones responsible for their “village”, already have ideas about how to improve, accelerate, or gain efficiency. It may not be a Big Bang approach, but it can make a real difference.
Kristina Wright
Absolutely. And you don’t have to go to a Big Five consulting firm to do this. Many companies do, and they end up with elaborate slide decks that are often too generic. They show all the excellent things the company isn’t doing, which can be valuable, but honestly, sometimes it feels like it’s just about billable hours.
The practical approach is far more straightforward. Listen to what’s happening in your organisation. Create clarity around it. Then let the smart people who are actually driving the business be the front runners, but do it in a structured, governed way. Ensure you understand the meaningful steps you are taking, what you are funding, and the baseline you’re establishing, so you can measure real success.
Margaret Jaouadi
For leaders who are either driving a transformation or thinking about bringing in an experienced consultant like you, what are three things they could start doing today that would immediately increase the likelihood of success?
Kristina Wright
I think we’ve touched on this already, but here is a quick summary:
First, assess your data landscape. Understand the sum of all initiatives happening in your digital or AI space. Ensure you have a clear understanding of what drives your strategy and what you are funding. Set boundaries, too, as some things are too small for executives to look at directly, but give someone the mandate to orchestrate them. That clarity alone makes a huge difference.
Second, focus on leadership. Have someone responsible for leading the programme or transformation. Just having a designated leader already sets you apart. That person can maintain focus, coordinate across “villages,” and make sure everything is aligned to your strategy.
Third, be thoughtful about external help. Avoid hiring a consultant to lead the change, as this approach is counterproductive. A consultant can serve as a sparring partner, interim support, or “running mate” to help a leader overcome a stall, establish the right cadence, and periodically check progress. But the execution must stay internal. Otherwise, consultants will leave with learnings, but the business is left to manage the change alone. Their value is in supporting and guiding, not in taking over.
Margaret Jaouadi
Thank you, Kristina, for distilling your vast knowledge into these clear and actionable insights and sharing them with our audience. Your passion for the topic, practical approach, and willingness to make difficult decisions are a tremendous asset to any company that engages your services. I wish you continued success in everything that you do.
Kristina’s book, One Village at a Time: Real Lessons from the Grit, Chaos, and Wins of Leading Global Transformation, came out in September 2025 and is available on Amazon and other major platforms.
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