Companies are pouring millions into “digital transformation” initiatives — but a high percentage of those fail to pay off. That’s because companies put the cart before the horse, focusing on a specific technology (“we need a machine-learning strategy!”) rather than doing the hard work of fitting the change into the overall business strategy first. Not only should they align tech investments with business goals — they should also lean more on insider knowledge than outside consultants, acknowledge fears about job loss that those insiders may have, develop deep knowledge of how changes will affect customer experience, and use process techniques borrowed from the tech world (experimentation, prototyping, etc.) to facilitate change.