In June 2025, The Guardian reported that one of the United Kingdom’s longstanding oil assets, the Lindsey Oil Refinery, had gone into administration. The news sent ripples through the energy sector. Not due to a natural disaster or economic crash, but as the result of a complex transformation effort that ultimately fell short.
Following its acquisition by Prax in 2021, the refinery reportedly accumulated £75 million in operating losses. In response, leadership undertook aggressive cost-reduction measures and structural changes aimed at turning the business around. However, in doing so, some critical operational functions were downsized, and frontline input was under-leveraged. By mid-2025, with debts totaling £250 million, the business struggled to maintain safe operations and meet its obligations. While external advisors raised concerns, these were not fully acted upon in time. What began as a transformation intended to stabilize the refinery became a case study in the risks of overlooking key operational fundamentals during change.
Everything unraveled.
This failure is not isolated. It reflects a broader industry challenge. According to multiple global studies, nearly 70% of transformation efforts fail (Oil and Gas IQ, 2024). In asset-heavy sectors such as oil and gas, mining, and heavy manufacturing, these failures are often less about poor technology and more about flawed execution, organizational misalignment, or lack of cultural adaptation.
Take GE’s digital transformation in the 2010s, for example. The company invested billions in building a digital industrial business but struggled with unclear priorities, internal silos, and insufficient buy-in from core engineering teams, ultimately leading to a strategic reset. In the mining sector, several automation programs in Australia’s iron ore operations faltered in their early phases due to lack of engagement with frontline operators and inconsistent integration with existing systems. Even in the renewable energy space, a major European wind turbine manufacturer faced operational setbacks after restructuring its supply chain too rapidly, leading to delays, cost overruns, and a dip in market confidence.
These examples underscore a recurring truth: transformation is not simply about installing new systems or cutting costs, it’s about managing change across people, processes, and performance.
So why do these initiatives fail, and what do the best-performing companies do differently? The answer lies in balance. Successful transformations require technical excellence and cultural readiness, strategic leadership and frontline ownership, and clear governance alongside empowered teams.
Root Causes of Failure: People, Process, and Governance
Many transformations start with the right intent but stall when implementation overlooks key factors. Here are the five most common failure modes:
Another issue is pilot paralysis. Many organizations run promising digital pilots that show good early results. But they fail to build the systems, playbooks, and resources to scale success across plants or regions. In parallel, transformation governance is often an afterthought. Without a clear Transformation Office or program management team, initiatives lack structure, priorities shift constantly, and results fade. Finally, leadership disengagement is a silent killer. When CEOs or plant managers fail to personally champion the transformation, it signals to employees that the effort is optional, not mission-critical.
What World-Class Operators Do Differently
Despite the high failure rate, many companies succeed. They treat transformation not as a checklist but as a journey, built on clear principles. Here’s what they do differently:
1. Leadership Ownership
In companies that lead successful transformations, top executives are visibly engaged. CEOs, COOs, and department heads participate in strategic workshops, clearly communicate objectives, and demonstrate the behaviors they want others to adopt. Their involvement creates trust and a sense of urgency across the organization. At Unilever, for example, senior executives actively championed the company’s digital supply chain transformation by regularly engaging with teams on the ground. This helped unify efforts and reinforce the strategic vision throughout all layers of the business.
2. End to End Value Framing
Rather than focusing on technology for its own sake, successful operators define every transformation initiative in terms of business value. Predictive maintenance is not positioned as an AI upgrade but as a strategy to reduce equipment failures and unplanned downtime. Mobile workflows are introduced as a means to improve safety and speed up permit approvals rather than just digitizing paper forms. This clear value framing ensures that digital solutions are aligned with practical outcomes and are easier for teams to adopt and measure.
A strong example of this principle in action comes from Shell, which implemented AI-driven predictive maintenance across more than 10,000 critical assets. Rather than promote the initiative as a technical milestone, Shell explicitly framed it around business outcomes: reducing unplanned downtime, cutting maintenance costs, and enhancing safety. The result? Downtime was reduced by up to 20%, maintenance costs dropped by an estimated 5–15%, and operational safety improved through earlier detection of equipment failures. This kind of value-first framing helped align internal stakeholders, increased adoption on the ground, and ensured that transformation efforts were directly tied to measurable operational performance.
3. People First Change Programs
Transformation leaders treat behavior change with the same seriousness as system implementation. Milliken & Company, a global manufacturer, implemented its Performance Solutions approach at a chemical plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The program focused on daily visual performance boards, team-led improvement projects, and operator-led stand-up meetings. As a result, the plant achieved a significant improvement in quality performance and went several years without a recordable safety incident. This success was rooted not in the tools themselves, but in how people were engaged to lead the change.
4. Frontline Co-Creation
Beyond simply delivering tools to the front line, world-class companies work alongside them to design effective solutions. Accenture’s AI Refinery Engineering Hub in Singapore provides a clear example. The hub brings together operators, engineers, and safety leaders to co-develop AI applications tailored to real operational needs. This collaborative approach ensures that tools are usable, context-appropriate, and more likely to be embraced. Co-creation also fosters trust and allows employees to feel part of the innovation process.
5. Scale by Design Execution
Leading organizations think about scaling from the very beginning. They create consistent templates, define clear KPIs, and build governance systems that support repeatability across sites. A Southeast Asian oil and gas company implemented augmented reality-based remote support in a few pilot plants in 2023. After seeing a 40 percent reduction in maintenance backlogs and a 15 percent improvement in turnaround times, the company rapidly expanded the program to more than 20 plants. This success was made possible because the systems and structures for scaling were built into the design.
6. Robust Program Management
Transformation Offices in high-performing companies serve as agile enablers rather than bureaucratic checkpoints. They are responsible for tracking performance indicators, identifying risks, and ensuring operational alignment with strategic goals. When they sense fatigue or declining engagement, they adjust timelines and reallocate resources to maintain momentum. These offices ensure that transformation remains dynamic, focused, and responsive to challenges as they arise.
A Practical Roadmap to Making It Stick
Based on lessons from across industries, here is a transformation roadmap with four critical stages:
a) Diagnose and ground the change: Begin with a transparent health check. This should assess culture, systems, skills, and leadership readiness. Identify areas of inertia and pockets of energy. Be honest about what has failed in the past and what needs to change.
b) Assemble the transformation core: Establish a “Transformation Office” reporting to the CEO. Include representation from Operations, IT, Maintenance, HR, and Finance. Appoint a senior sponsor and provide the authority to cut through silos. Invest in cross-functional workshops to align priorities and language.
c) Launch pilots designed to scale: Start with two to three high ROI use cases. Co-create with users and define clear success metrics: cost savings, time saved, risk reduction. Prioritise visibility. Track usage and adoption weekly.
d) Scale and embed: Expand proven solutions site-by-site. Convert wins into playbooks and training modules. Tie performance reviews and incentives to adoption and impact. Celebrate milestones publicly to maintain momentum. Capture lessons in retrospectives to improve each cycle.
Avoiding the Lindsey-Style Collapse
Lindsey’s failure in 2025 was not a surprise. It followed a familiar path: cut costs too fast, ignore frontline expertise, dismiss external checks, and stretch operations too thin. The company carried too much debt and ignored cultural risk until it was too late.
In contrast, best-in-class operators walk the journey with their people. They define value in operational terms, focus on adoption not just tech, scale thoughtfully, and hold themselves accountable.
Transformation should not be a flashy event. It should become the new way of working.
Final Takeaway: Transform in a Way That Sticks
Transformation is not just about introducing new tools. It is about shifting behaviours, mindsets, and systems. Failures happen when change is too fast, too top-down, or too isolated. Success happens when change is people-first, purpose-driven, and scalable by design.
As one change expert said, “Transformation fatigue is not caused by too much change, but by too many failed attempts at change that never involved the people.”
Avoid that trap. Build transformation that lasts.