The Most Transformative Thing You Can Do? Change What You Call It.
When you say "digital transformation" or "AI initiative," everyone thinks they know what you mean. But each person is imagining something different.
Your leadership team keeps saying "north" in every strategy meeting. Everyone nods. Everyone agrees.
But there are different norths. Geographic north and magnetic north can lead you miles apart. At the start, the difference is invisible. Six months later, your teams are building in completely different directions.
The problem with legacy terms
When you say "digital transformation" or "AI initiative," everyone thinks they know what you mean. But each person is imagining something different. Engineering thinks infrastructure. Product thinks user experience. Security thinks compliance. Everyone's moving, not converging. Nobody asks what you actually mean. Because asking feels pedantic.
Except they should.
The pattern
At Google, we had "Tablet Tuesday": people using tablets to understand mobile experiences. Catchy. Well-intentioned. When it wasn't delivering results, they changed it to "Mobile First." Everything changed. Not the strategy. Just the name.
Mobile First was sharp. Specific. It forced teams to ask: what does this mean for my product? My infrastructure? No baggage. No old interpretations.
Same in security. Shift from "protection" to "preemptive security," and teams have to define it together. In AI now, "AI transformation" could mean automation, chatbots, ML models, agentic workflows, or cultural change. Six months in, teams discover they've been building different futures.
Why it works
Fresh terminology has no legacy baggage. When you pick a new name, especially a deliberately unusual one, nobody can retreat into their existing mental model. They have to engage with what this means, right now. The act of choosing the name forces the alignment conversation.
The label change isn't downstream of alignment. It's the mechanism of alignment.
Your diagnostic
Look at your current initiatives. Using terms like "digital transformation," "modernization," or "AI initiative"? That's your signal. Ask: could five people on your team define this the same way? If not, pick a new name. Even a weird one. Force the conversation before you're six months down the road wondering why execution feels so hard.
Related: The Briefing
One session. A leadership team leaves with the same words for the same thing.
The Briefing