Why is value creation, and beyond it transformation, so hard? Ask most private equity firms what value creation means and you will hear a typical playbook of cost reduction, efficiency improvement, one or two growth initiatives, and a governance clean-up that makes a good equity story. That is the playbook across Korea and much of Asia and has been for the past 10 years. Is that genuinely creating value?

The plan is the easy part.

Setting a vision and drawing a detailed End Picture takes time and effort, but it can be done, and when it is done it can feel as though the hard part is behind you. Then come the two or three years of execution that decide the outcome, where things do not go as planned. There are fires to put out every day. The financial numbers come up short vs. budget. People ask you for personal favors in making tough calls. The leaders who are supposed to be driving it tell you they understand the End Picture when they did not. And every quarter hands you one more perfectly good reason to stop.

Most journeys lose their way in a quiet manner, without realizing it. Drifts happen because you choose to compromise in making difficult decisions. You push a decision to next quarter, pending further discussion or because something urgent came up. As these compromises and indecisions pile up, the gap grows and you are walking on a different path than what was planned. It is a slow creep without fully realizing how wide the gap has become. As time passes and the results have not come, the voices of failure start and the political forces pushing to go back begin to gather. That is where journeys are lost.

Which is why you need a firm axis to keep you on the right path.

Sailors lost at sea relied on the North Star as a guide to find their way home. Transformation needs the same thing: something that will keep you steadfast and on the proper path when there is trouble and difficulty, when the effort seems to have failed, and when you are quietly wondering whether to stop. Those who watched The Odyssey recently will understand what that axis was for Odysseus.

Personally, mine is religious. It is my faith in Christ. It is my purpose in life to serve God, it is what holds me steady when things are hard, and it is what I go back to in times of trouble to seek clarity. It brings me back to my vision, my purpose and my path, and therefore exactly where the gap has opened.

The way I do this with a company is with a simple question: will this make it a better company? Not for the shareholder alone, but for every stakeholder who matters, judged over the long term.

This question is why I focus on long-term competitiveness above almost everything else. One way to get there is by improving each business function to best-in-class with playbooks that have been proven elsewhere. Another way is surgery. And surgery, no matter how you cut it, is painful, it needs recovery time, and it requires a change in lifestyle to ensure continued impact. For a company, that means a permanent change in way of working is needed, similar to how you need to change your lifestyle and dietary habits.

Transformation means rewiring how the company actually works. Tasks change, organizations change, roles and responsibilities change. In doing that you end up stepping on toes, encroaching on territory people have considered their own for years, and redrawing reporting lines and spheres of influence. What is good for the company arrives as a personal loss to someone inside it. If you have been through part of this with DX, then with AX it is not optional. It is the whole exercise.

So how do you get people to understand and embrace it? Directives only go so far. Financial compensation only goes so far. Personal goodwill only goes so far. Each one solves part of it but not all. The only thing I have found that actually works is an honest and repeated conversation about what is best for the company over the long term, how the company becomes fundamentally more competitive, and what that means for each person on the journey.

Even then, the people with the sharpest political instincts will tell you from the start that they are fully behind the change when they are not. Some see a chance to take more power. Some see a threat they cannot quite name. Some simply want everything to stay exactly as it is.

This is why you need the vision, a detailed End Picture, and full alignment across the team. That alignment only comes from an enormous amount of communication, careful planning, and visible conviction and fortitude from the management team. One town hall and a well-made deck will not get you there.

You also need detailed milestones and early wins that people can see. Results have to come through early enough to prove that the dream you shared was not an empty one and that they made a good choice in backing it, because that is what gives people the strength to keep pushing through a difficult change. Those early wins are also what turn the doubters into your most committed believers.

The rewards have to be real as well. Large enough at the end to have been worth the journey, and shared broadly enough that everyone who built it shares in it. A win that only a handful of people take home does not buy you the next one.

That belief, and the willingness to take on the journey, is what makes a transformation both punishing and extraordinary. You did it as a team, the people in it grew, the company became genuinely better, and all of you made it happen. Anyone who has played a sport or followed a team for years knows the feeling. Being part of a winning team is addictive, and it is hard to go back once you have had it.

It took Liverpool 30 years to win the long-awaited title. That is why you need that axis. In life, and on this journey. It is what gets you all the way to a dream this big.

That is the Artemis way.