Digital Transformation: Why Synergy Is THE Strategy

According to McKinsey, 70% of digital transformations fail to achieve their intended goals. The main cause is not the technology itself, but the persistence of organizational silos and the inability to connect strategy with execution. Companies spend billions on software, automation, and cloud platforms, only to find that these tools don’t talk to each other and neither do the teams that manage them.

If you’re a CEO, CIO, or leading change inside your company, this isn’t a side note. It’s the core reason why investments stall and why digital “initiatives” rarely evolve into digital strategy.

The truth is simple: technology was never meant to operate in isolation. It exists to make human tasks easier and organizational systems stronger. Yet most companies treat technology as a sum of parts: a CRM here, an HR platform there, a cybersecurity solution patched on top. They add (at best) rather than multiply (as they should always).

As Aristotle put it over two millennia ago: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” If your company operates as a collection of independent units, it’s fragmented. If it operates interdependently, it becomes synergistic.

And here’s the controversial part: real synergies don’t add value, they multiply it. But multiplication also means risk: if one area drags performance below 1, the product of all efforts shrinks. That erosion of value is far more common than executives care to admit. Bottomline, Synergy always needs growth in order to generate new growth.

Fragmentation Begins With Culture, Not Technology

How many companies boast about investing millions in digital platforms only to discover that results look better on the slide deck than on the balance sheet?

Imagine (or maybe remember) the following: sales deploys an advanced CRM. IT runs a secure but isolated database. And Marketing manages campaigns in spreadsheets. Individually, each tool performs. Together, they create chaos: duplicated records, conflicting insights, frustrated customers. Fragmented technology is a symptom of fragmented leadership and culture. When every department chooses its tools and KPIs in isolation, integration becomes an afterthought. And no, APIs don’t solve cultural misalignment. 

Metrics That Protect Silos

Let’s be clear: KPIs aren’t the enemy. Misused KPIs are. IT proudly reports “incidents resolved per month,” while HR shows “reduced turnover,” and Marketing flaunts “reach and impressions.” All of them with green on the dashboard, but all disconnected from the customer’s experience.

Deloitte recently found that 62% of executives admit their KPIs do not align with enterprise-wide objectives. In other words, metrics often serve to justify a department’s existence rather than advance a company’s strategy.

Real synergy begins when metrics are not just correlated but congruent. If one KPI improves but erodes value elsewhere, it should count as failure. Numbers that multiply together, not just add up separately, define strategic success.

Digital 'Modernization' Gone Wrong

Consider a retail chain that wants to modernize its operations. They purchased a sleek point-of-sale system, launched a customer app with personalized recommendations, and retrained staff on new digital workflows. But: 1) The Point Of Sales system wasn’t linked to inventory. 2) The app suggested products that weren’t in stock. 3) Staff couldn’t interpret the new system’s error codes. What is the outcome? Yes, customers angry about unavailable items, confused employees, and digital adoption plummeting.

When processes, data, and training were finally integrated under a single strategy, the results changed dramatically: faster service times, fewer errors, higher satisfaction. That wasn’t magic. It was synergy. Each area multiplied the other’s value instead of cancelling it out.

Four Hard Truths About Transformation

Buying technology is NOT digital transformation. Gartner reports that only 16% of organizations say their digital initiatives deliver sustained performance improvements.

Vendors profit from isolated “solutions.” It’s easier to sell shiny tools than tackle integration.

The culture of “my KPI” kills more projects than budget cuts ever will. Fragmented success is still systemic failure.

Leadership without synergy reduces value. A strong IT or HR team alone won’t save a company that acts and measures in silos.

If a business unit doesn’t multiply the value of the others, it shouldn’t exist in its current form. Restructure it, transform it, or shut it down.

From Isolated Wins to Shared Purpose

Growth happens when organizations stop obsessing over isolated achievements and start measuring holistic impact.

Just ask yourself (and your company) the following:

• Did customers’ tickets resolution times shrink?
• Did resilience against disruptions improve?
• Did innovation emerge from cross-functional collaboration?
• Did KPI improvements enhance the company’s overall value proposition?

If the answer is “no” to any of these questions (especially the last one), your transformation is cosmetic, not strategic.

This is why frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are only as good as their alignment. Without shared objectives, OKRs devolve into glorified KPIs. True synergy requires transversal goals that force collaboration.

Leadership That Orchestrates, Not Just Manages

Leadership must change. It’s not enough for each director to be an expert in their silo. The role of top management is to orchestrate integration. McKinsey notes that companies with cross-functional leadership teams are 1.9 times more likely to hit transformation targets. Yet most boards still operate under the assumption that “IT knows tech, HR knows people, Finance knows numbers.” Without cross-talk, none of it compounds.

Real leadership is not hierarchical, it’s systemic. Leaders must ensure every department understands not only its own role but also how its performance multiplies the company’s value.

Here are some numbers that matter:

• 70% of digital transformations fail (McKinsey, 2021).
• 62% of leaders say KPIs don’t align to enterprise strategy (Deloitte, 2023).
• Only 16% of firms report sustained performance improvements from digital projects (Gartner, 2022).
• Cross-functional leadership doubles the likelihood of transformation success (McKinsey, 2021).
• Integrating customer, employee, and digital experience increases retention by up to 25% (Accenture, 2022).

These aren’t footnotes. They’re warnings you should be aware of.

Synergy Is THE Strategy

Organizations that manage to integrate people, processes, and technology under a single vision don’t just add improvements, they create exponential results. Incremental gains in isolated areas will never equal systemic advantage. The companies that understand this will thrive. Those that don’t will spend the next decade buying more tools, celebrating siloed KPIs, and wondering why competitors outpace them. Because at the end of the day: synergy is not optional. It is THE strategy.

Always open and happy to receive feedback. Let’s talk.

Sources:

McKinsey & Company — Why do most transformations fail? (2021)

Deloitte — Global Human Capital Trends (2023)

Gartner — The State of Digital Business Transformation (2022)

Accenture — Customer Experience and Retention Report (2022)