Mongi Gazelle

Digital transformations rarely fail loudly. No single outage, no catastrophic failure, no news outlet-worthy incident. They fail quietly. Budgets get eaten, platforms are handed over, dashboards become green — and yet the organization looks more complicated, slower, and more difficult to control than ever.

There is more risk, less visibility. Now more than 30 years serving across aviation, banking, telecom, retail operations, and manufacturing on boards and executive forces, the same formula has continued to unfold.

Technically, these transformation projects work, but institutionally they don’t. The underlying cause is seldom technology. It’s rather the lack of clear executive ownership. When transformation is reframed as a “program” rather than a lasting paradigm shift in how decisions are made, a number of things occur.

Architectural choices pile up without accountability. Ownership of risk becomes dispersed among committees. Cybersecurity and compliance become reactive control functions. Leadership misses the line of sight between investment, risk and outcome. This is not a maturity issue—it is a governance exposure, especially in heavily regulated and mission-critical environments.

Successful organizations do a different thing. They: Consider architecture not a technical construct, but an executive decision framework. Anchor cybersecurity and cloud adoption on the ownership of risk, not tool choice. Demand transparency about decision making, even if it stifles early momentum. Recognize that speed without governance breeds fragility, not advantage. The most successful boards I’ve worked with clearly understand one principle:
Digital transformation alters the organization’s risk profile before it alters its capabilities. Leaders who understand this early on don’t just ask, “What are we building?”. They ask “Who owns the consequences?”. That question – and being asked time and again – is what distinguishes sustainable change from silent failure.

UAE-based | Involved in board-level conversations relating to digital transformation, cyber governance and operational resilience in the GCC and Europe.