Most programs that call themselves transformations are change programs wearing a bigger word. The distinction sounds academic until you watch a program stall, and realize it stalled because no one was clear which one they were running.
Improving the model versus replacing it
Change improves the model you already have. Faster process, lower cost, better service, fewer errors, all within the existing operating logic. It is real work and often valuable. But the boxes stay roughly where they were. You are tuning the engine.
Transformation changes the model itself. Different operating logic, different decision rights, sometimes a different definition of what the organization is for. The old metrics may no longer make sense. The people who were good at the old model are not automatically good at the new one. You are not tuning the engine. You are changing what the vehicle does.
Are we trying to make the current model work better, or trying to replace it with a different one? If the leadership team cannot answer in one sentence, the program will quietly default to change while everyone keeps using the word transformation.
Why conflating them stalls everything
The conflation is not harmless. Run a transformation with the governance, incentives, and timeline of a change program and it stalls precisely where the two diverge. Change can be delegated to the line and measured against today's targets. Transformation cannot, because the line is optimized for the model you are trying to leave behind. Ask it to dismantle its own logic between quarterly targets and it will, rationally, protect the targets.
So the program drifts into safe, incremental improvement and calls it transformation in the update. Everyone is busy. Nothing fundamental moves.
Name it honestly before you fund it. Most things you are running are change, and that is fine. Just do not expect a tune-up to take you somewhere a new vehicle was built to reach.