ERP Transformations Part 4 – Inadequate Leadership Experience

January 8, 2026 / Gravity IT Resources /

Inadequate Leadership Experience: When Governance Turns into Guesswork

Part 4 of Our ERP Transformation Series. By ERP Transformation Practitioners – In the Field Since 1995

After nearly three decades of ERP transformations across SAP and Oracle programs, one lesson stands above the rest:

ERP programs don’t fail because governance is missing – they fail because leadership lacks the experience to make governance work.

In Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, we explored how inadequate planning and misaligned resourcing quietly undermine ERP transformations. In this final installment, we address the most decisive – and most underestimated – factor of all: leadership experience. Because when leadership is inexperienced, governance becomes ceremony. And ceremony does not deliver transformation.

1. ERP Leadership Is a Specialized Discipline – Not a General Management Skill

Too many ERP programs are led by executives or PMOs with paper-experience (aka per resume) but have limited exposure to operational full-cycle ERP transformations. ERP leadership is not intuitive. It requires firsthand understanding of:

Cross-functional design trade-offs
Data and integration dependencies
Change saturation and adoption fatigue
Vendor and partner delivery dynamics
The long-term consequences of early design decisions
And – most importantly: leadership foresight (been there done that, multi times over)!

Without this lived experience, leaders struggle to distinguish between real risk and background noise. Decisions get delayed. Escalations get softened. Issues get rationalized instead of resolved. And slowly, the program drifts.

2. When Governance Looks Impressive – But Does Nothing

We’ve all seen it: beautifully documented governance frameworks, filled with committees, escalation paths, and reporting dashboards. Yet despite all the structure, problems persist.

Why? Because governance without experienced leadership quickly devolves into:

Status updates instead of decision forums
Risk logs that track issues but don’t resolve them
Steering committees that review progress but avoid accountability
PMOs that report facts without authority to act

In these environments, governance becomes performance art – busy, polished, and ineffective. True governance is not about meetings. It’s about decisions based on experience (aka leadership foresight).

3. Inexperienced Leaders Optimize for Comfort, Not Outcomes

One of the most damaging patterns we see in ERP leadership is conflict avoidance. When leaders lack ERP scars, they often:

Hesitate to challenge implementation partner(s)
Accept optimistic narratives instead of hard truths
Allow scope creep in the name of “flexibility”
Defer difficult decisions until they become crises

This is not incompetence – it’s unfamiliarity. ERP transformations require leaders who are comfortable being uncomfortable, who know when to press, when to escalate, and when to reset expectations before the program is beyond recovery.

4. Authority Without Experience Creates False Confidence

Titles do not equal transformation capability. We’ve seen ERP programs led by executives (by title) with unquestioned authority – but limited ERP experience. The result is often a dangerous form of false confidence:

Early warning signs are dismissed
Technical debt is underestimated
Delivery issues are framed as temporary
Partner assurances go unchallenged

By the time reality sets in, the program is deep into execution, costs have escalated, and options are limited. Experience doesn’t guarantee success – but lack of it dramatically increases risk.

5. Strong ERP Leaders Anchor Decisions to Business Value

The most effective ERP leaders we’ve worked with share a common trait: they relentlessly tie decisions back to business outcomes. They ask:

Does this design choice support the value case?
Are we solving the right problem or just the easiest one?
What is the downstream impact of this decision?
Who owns this outcome?

This perspective cuts through noise and keeps the program aligned when pressures mount. Without it, governance becomes reactive, tactical, and disconnected from the transformation’s purpose.

What Experienced ERP Leadership Actually Looks Like

After decades in the field – across both successful programs and recoveries – certain leadership patterns consistently emerge:

A. Leaders With Full-Cycle ERP Experience: They’ve seen planning shortcuts fail (the biggest culprit of ERP programs going sour!!!), resourcing gaps surface, and governance breakdowns spiral.

B. Clear Ownership and Decision Rights: Ambiguity kills momentum. Experienced leaders define accountability early and enforce it.

C. Empowered PMOs With Authority, Not Just Reporting Duties: The PMO becomes the nerve center of the program, not a documentation factory.

D. Governance That Forces Decisions: Every forum exists to decide, not to observe.

E. Willingness to Challenge Partners and Reset Course: Strong leaders protect the organization, not the contract narrative.

In Summary

ERP transformations don’t fail because organizations lack governance models. They fail because leadership lacks the experience to use them effectively. When leadership is inexperienced, governance turns into guesswork, decisions drift, risks accumulate, and accountability fades.

Across 30 years of ERP transformations, one truth remains constant:

The quality of leadership determines the ceiling of success.

For organizations embarking on or recovering from an ERP transformation, the question is not whether you have governance in place. The real question is:

Do your leaders have the experience to make it work?

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