How to Keep Transformation Grounded in Process

GEMBAfication podcast guest speaker Karen Winter at Informa TechTarget

Problems Before Platforms

Bringing teams, products, and systems together at Informa TechTarget created opportunities to simplify ways of working. It also created pressure to move quickly.

Karen Winter, Chief Transformation Officer, reflects on the realities of leading transformation through complexity, the role of process in shaping better decisions, and the risks of starting with the solution before fully understanding the problem.

“We should have spent more time understanding the process problems first.”

In this epsiode:

00:00 Introduction
01:03 Preparing Informa TechTarget for a major merger
03:39 Bringing sales teams, systems and products together
06:11 Building trust through clear governance and decision-making
09:47 Why process mapping became a catalyst for change
11:42 Measuring performance through the customer’s eyes
13:49 Taking a practical approach to AI adoption
15:52 Solving business problems before choosing the technology
17:14 Lessons from moving too quickly on transformation
19:15 Managing expectations when change takes longer than planned
21:24 The impact of culture on successful change
23:05 Why continuous learning matters for leaders
25:57 Outro

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How to Keep Transformation Grounded in Process

At the Gemba:

Karen Winter is Chief Transformation Officer of Informa TechTarget, a division of Informa, where she leads enterprise transformation, technology, AI and automation, Operational Excellence, change management and value realisation.

After a career in academic and professional publishing, Karen switched to managing data and improvement projects, joining Informa in 2014, when she was introduced to Lean Six Sigma. She is now a Black Belt and is currently on the Level 6 Improvement Leader apprenticeship with PMI Capella.

Karen is particularly interested in analysing how organisations actually work: where value gets lost, what prevents people from doing their best work, and how process, technology, data and organisational design can come together to improve performance, colleague experience and customer outcomes. Her current focus is on how AI and automation intersect with Lean principles and practice to solve real business problems, and how to implement this effectively at scale.

Learning from the frontline of change and improvement

Every episode centres on a candid conversation with someone who’s led change from the inside. We deliberately explore both sides of the story, from the moments where improvement delivered meaningful results, to times when things didn’t go to plan. Our guests are generous with their honesty, talking openly about decisions made under pressure, warning signs they noticed too late, and what they’d do differently next time.

In our world, every experience is valuable, and hearing how others have navigated the realities of performance improvement makes the work feel less isolating, and far more achievable. So if you’re looking for thoughtful reflection, practical insight, and reassurance that progress rarely follows a straight line, GEMBAfication is for you.

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GEMBAfication is PMI’s new podcast for improvement professionals looking for an honest view of what improvement really looks like in practice. Because in our world, every experience is valuable.

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