Why most AI projects fail on strategy, not technology
This episode was recorded in German.
Proven approaches for everyone who wants to make digital transformation a real leadership priority
In a world shaped by data and artificial intelligence, it isn't enough to roll out an AI tool and hope the rest takes care of itself. Digital transformation is a process that has to be thought through as a whole, from strategy to company culture. Dr. Imme Baumüller, who has built digital units at Handelsblatt, the Vaillant Group and most recently as Head of Global Digital, Business & Application at TK Elevator, shows in our podcast what real digital transformation looks like.
Digital transformation: more than technology
For Dr. Imme Baumüller, technology is never the starting point, only the tool. What matters is not which tool a company introduces, but how people work with it. "It isn't the technology that decides whether the technology succeeds, it's always the people and how they use it," Dr. Imme Baumüller explains. Anyone who misses that distinction confuses digital transformation with an IT rollout.
Strategy first, technology second
One of Baumüller's central lessons: every digital initiative has to be derived from the company strategy, not the other way around. "You have to start with the strategy," she says. A McKinsey study she cites shows that the main reason companies fail with AI is the missing link between the use of technology and clearly defined strategic goals and metrics. If you look for the right AI tool first and only then ask what you actually want to achieve, you have the order backwards.
Take fears seriously: people at the center
Leaders often underestimate how much uncertainty digital change creates. Many employees feel genuine fear about what is coming without being able to put it into words. That's why Dr. Imme Baumüller believes the first step is to identify the people in the company who are enthusiastic about new technology and, at the same time, have professional credibility. Only together with them can you win over the rest of the organization, not with directives from the top alone.
Breaking down silos: trust as a leadership task
From her time at the Vaillant Group, Dr. Imme Baumüller describes departments that had each built their own data worlds and their own tools, the result of different but individually justified departmental goals, not simply a lack of willingness to cooperate. For her, such diverging perspectives are a normal part of an organization in which every unit takes its own responsibility seriously. What matters is that the overarching company strategy always remains the anchor for decisions, not the preference of an individual department. In some situations that means management has to make a decision that cuts across the strategy of a single unit because it serves the company as a whole. How mistakes are handled also shows how much cultural work is needed: when she introduced fuckup meetings, she met considerable resistance, precisely because speaking openly about mistakes is simply not part of many corporate cultures.
AI as a tool, not an end in itself
The same applies to artificial intelligence, according to Dr. Imme Baumüller: don't start with the technology, start with the goal. Only once it's clear which problem needs solving is it worth looking at possible tools. And change costs money: in her experience, for every euro invested in technology, at least another euro should go into the people who are supposed to use that technology with conviction.
An invitation to act
For executives, digital leads and everyone who genuinely wants to drive digital transformation in their company, this episode offers concrete food for thought, from the right order of strategy and technology to dealing with fears and silos in your own team.
Get inspired and find out how to stop leaving digital transformation to chance and treat it as what it is: a leadership task. 🚀 Listen to the podcast episode now and rethink your digital transformation!
SHOW NOTES
Dr. Imme Baumüller https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-imme-baumueller-mba/
Christian Underwood https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianunderwood/
Strategic Decision Intelligence: https://strategicdecisionintelligence.ai
"Hope Is Not a Strategy" magazine https://shop.strategyframe.ai/products/hoffnung-ist-keine-strategie-ii-1-strategic-decision-intelligence
All links https://linktr.ee/strategyframe