The message of change during technology transformation needs to come wrapped in an explicit promise. Usually, that promise is often hidden.

The promise should be about specific things you and your people care about.

What do you and your team care about? Do you care about increased speed of delivery along with better efficiency? Or do you care about new technologies along with autonomy of work?

Which of these would you pick as the duo to start making better together?

productivity
open source
security
cost effectiveness
stability
speed of delivery
recovery from failure
deployment frequency
sustainability
trendiness
experimentation
privacy
visibility
popularity
autonomy
structure
efficiency
novelty (new technologies)
reducing wastage
predictability
skills
customer feedback
balanced work hours
cooperation

It’s tempting to say you want to make better “all of it” or “any of it”. But if you say that, then it would be impossible to create the focus and commitment to make change for better. Trying to make all of it better is a bit like making all of it worse. Given limited resources, you can’t focus on all of it. This is why so many Technology transformation initiatives fail - they are not specific enough to move people.

Transformation leaders need to force the focus and not hide behind “transforming it all”. Forcing focus will not satisfy everyone and might offend someone, but not doing so will lead to compromises and generalizations. Make the focus of change specific. Specific means accountable - it either worked or it didn’t, it either caught on or it didn’t.

Instead of being general you can focus on a promise to make two things you care about better and then and pull all stops to make it happen.