"The math is brutal. MIT found that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing. Bain reports organizations spent $30 to $40 billion on generative AI in the past year. And McKinsey found fewer than 1% of companies describe their AI adoption as "mature." Massive investment, negligible return. I spent nine years at Salesforce leading through major transformations. The technical side of change is never the hardest part. It's always the human side that determines whether things succeed or fail."
"I keep hearing the same pattern in conversations with executives. They have AI mandates from the top, with no clarity on how to get their people ready, on top of everything else they're already managing. And there's this thing they'll only say in private, " I don't know what I'm doing." Nobody does. In most organizations, leaders are still rewarded for looking certain, staying in control, running tight systems."
"Companies are essentially handing leaders technical training and telling them to figure it out. That's hope, not strategy. When Bret Taylor became Salesforce's Chief Product Officer, I got 30 minutes with him as a rising product leader. I knew our approach wasn't working and spoke from the heart about what I was seeing and how it needed to be better. He could have dismissed it, as I was several levels down. Instead, he listened."
Organizations have invested tens of billions in generative AI while most pilots fail and adoption remains immature. Employees are using the technology, but leaders lack the skills and structures to implement large-scale change and to prepare people. Executive mandates often come without clarity, leaving managers unprepared and afraid to experiment due to existing reward systems that value certainty and control. Companies tend to provide technical training while neglecting leadership development and human-centered change capabilities. Without equipping leaders to manage people, culture, and experimentation, AI investments risk becoming stranded capital and will not deliver significant business results.
Read at Fortune
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