Almost every client conversation about a transformation arrives at the same question, sooner or later: how long will this take? Most of the time, the person asking is hoping the answer is short, and 90 days is usually the number on the table. It sounds reasonable. It fits inside a budget cycle, a board update, a patience threshold. It is also, in most cases, the wrong number.

Any transformation project starts the same way. You define the goals, meet the people who matter, and find out where the company genuinely stands: what the real issues are, what could realistically solve them, and who in the room is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. From there you build a roadmap. What 90 days is actually good for is narrower than that: setting up a system, or putting a proper controlling structure in place where none existed before. That is real work, and it has value.

It is not a transformation.

A transformation project does not end after 90 days. In my experience, it ends after nine to twelve months. Ask me what happens if someone insists the whole thing needs to be wrapped up in 90 days, and my answer is simple: if it only takes 90 days, you probably don’t need us in the room.

Why the shortcut doesn’t hold

The temptation to compress the timeline comes from a reasonable place. Nobody wants a consultant, or an interim, parked in the business longer than necessary. But speed and durability are not opposites you get to pick between. You need both, and you only get both one way: by taking people along.

That means earning the trust to deliver results, while at the same time making sure people understand, and are capable of sustaining, whatever the right way forward turns out to be. It isn’t a choice between the two. You need both, or the result doesn’t hold.

That is the part a 90-day mandate structurally cannot deliver. You can install a system in 90 days. You cannot, in that time, get an entire organisation to genuinely own a different way of operating. One is a deliverable. The other is a change in how people think and decide, and that takes as long as it takes.

The question worth asking before you hire

So the useful question, before bringing in outside leadership, isn’t “how long will this take.” It’s a different one: am I asking for a fix, or am I asking for a transformation? Those are two different jobs, and confusing one for the other is where most of the friction starts.

A fix can be scoped, timed, and closed out cleanly. A transformation cannot be rushed just to fit a quarter. If the honest answer is that you need real change, not just a system in place, then the 90-day plan you were hoping for was never really on the table. Better to find that out at the start than halfway through.

A different way to think about speed

None of this is an argument for taking longer than necessary. It’s an argument for being honest about what you’re actually asking for. A system can be installed in 90 days. An organisation that thinks and decides differently cannot. Confuse the two, and you end up disappointed either way: paying for a transformation you never really wanted, or getting a fix and being surprised when nothing about the business has actually changed.