Recently I launched a small publication on the human side of AI transformation. Part 1 asked why so many AI investments stall while the technology works — most companies end up pilot-rich but transformation-poor.
Today, Part 2 of this four-part series goes one layer deeper, into the first of three phases I call the Transformation Triad — Engage, Enable, Embed.
Here is the pattern I keep seeing. An existing vision is not yet a lived vision. Most AI strategies aren’t wrong on the slide — they simply never arrive. They’re announced at the top, cascaded through a town hall and a deck, and then quietly evaporate between the boardroom and the work people actually do on Monday morning.
It’s tempting to read the resistance that follows as “people don’t want to change.” I no longer think that’s right. In most cases people aren’t unwilling — they’re insufficiently informed, directed and equipped to begin. The clarity simply doesn’t survive the trip down the building: 56% of C-level leaders say they’re clear on strategic priorities; by middle management it’s 27% (McKinsey, 2026).
Closing that gap isn’t only a communication exercise. It’s a leadership practice: co-create the vision rather than announce it; verify the cascade rather than assume it; and put the CEO visibly in the driver’s seat. As I often put it — if your people have never seen you use an AI tool, it doesn’t much matter what the strategy document says.
One more thing worth naming: “the organisation” is never one audience. The C-level, the middle managers and the frontline are each asking a different question, and each fails in its own way. One announcement for all three reaches none of them.
Part 2 is live now — including a 20-minute exercise, the One-Cascade Test, that you can run with your own team this week.
Read it on my substack: https://lnkd.in/eRPRFgVU
Where does your organisation lose the vision on the way down — and what have you seen actually close the gap?
#AI #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #ChangeManagement #OKRs