Why many organisations are investing heavily in AI while their greatest growth risk lies elsewhere

Technology Accelerates Everything. Including Managerial Weakness.

Boards across the world are investing heavily in AI, automation and digital acceleration. Yet in a surprising number of organisations, the real limiting factor is not technological capability, but the managerial strength required to absorb and execute change.

Walk into the average boardroom today and you will hear much the same conversation everywhere. It is about artificial intelligence, process automation, data integration, scalability, efficiency, and the persistent question of how to get more done with fewer people. Pilot programmes are being launched, consultants brought in, software licences approved, and internal working groups assembled. The undertone is always the same: those who fail to accelerate now will inevitably fall behind.

That may very well be true.

But there is a far more uncomfortable question that is being asked in remarkably few executive teams: is the organisation internally strong enough to carry that acceleration?

Because technology has one characteristic that tends to disappear from view amid all the enthusiasm: it does not correct managerial weakness, it amplifies it. An organisation with diffuse ownership does not become sharper through more technology, but more fragmented. An organisation with fatigued management does not become more decisive through additional systems, but slower and heavier. And an organisation in which employees are already mentally disengaged will not suddenly move faster because AI is introduced. On the contrary, in many cases the distance simply becomes more visible.

The multi-billion investment that is still barely delivering

In that respect, the recently published Gallup report State of the Global Workplace 2026 [source] should be required reading for any executive who assumes that technology is the obvious route to higher productivity. Despite an estimated $40 billion in enterprise AI investments, 95% of organisations have yet to realise any demonstrable positive impact on profitability, while 89% of executives report no noticeable increase in labour productivity.

Those are not figures that can easily be explained away, particularly at a time when almost every strategic plan contains roughly the same vocabulary: digitise, accelerate, automate, organise more intelligently, and reduce dependence on labour. The implicit promise is clear: technology will fundamentally make the organisation more productive. What Gallup mainly shows is that, in practice, this is still happening only to a very limited extent.

And that should serve as a wake-up call. Not because AI lacks potential — it evidently does not — but because these outcomes reveal something else entirely: many organisations do not have a technology deficit; they have an absorption deficit. Systems are renewed, software is added, dashboards become smarter, but the organisational body that must work with it, make decisions, bring people along, and change behaviour remains essentially the same. That is exactly where the friction begins.

Managerial erosion rarely shows up immediately in the numbers

Many companies still look perfectly healthy from the outside. Revenue is stable, KPIs are being met or nearly met, strategy decks are in place, innovation programmes are underway, and quarterly reports offer no immediate reason for alarm. But that says less than many executives would like to believe.

The greatest organisational losses rarely emerge in the figures discussed in Monday morning management meetings. They emerge in the daily undercurrent of the business: supervisors postponing decisions, departments working past one another, employees doing exactly what is asked but nothing more, issues no longer being openly named, and ownership formally assigned but practically landing nowhere. None of that becomes visible in a single quarter, which is precisely why it is so deceptive. It accumulates until, at some point, the organisation becomes slow without anyone being able to identify exactly where the brake is.

Gallup uses stark language here. Globally, only 20% of employees are engaged at work; in Europe that number drops to just 12%. That means the overwhelming majority are present, drawing salary and completing tasks, but no longer investing any meaningful discretionary energy into the enterprise. People can appear productive and still be organisationally absent. Many leadership teams underestimate that.

When managers themselves begin to disconnect

Perhaps even more concerning is the decline among managers. Since 2022, engagement among people managers worldwide has fallen by 9 percentage points. That is not a detail; it is a systemic warning signal. Because this is the group that, in virtually every organisation, must translate strategy, maintain pace, correct behaviour, address people, handle conflict, set priorities, and organise ownership.

When this is precisely where the energy starts leaking away, an organisation may continue to function formally while steadily losing momentum. Decisions are taken at the top and work is done at the bottom, but in between everything becomes viscous. And organisational viscosity may well be one of the most expensive invisible cost items of our time; not because nothing happens, but because everything happens just too slowly, just too cautiously, and just too disconnectedly to create genuine acceleration.

I still encounter it far too often. On paper there is management, but in reality many managers have become little more than escalation points, meeting coordinators, planning custodians, report collectors, or buffers between top and bottom. That keeps the machinery running, but it is fundamentally different from leadership. And that is precisely the distinction between organisations that merely continue operating and organisations that truly move forward.

Why technology then becomes the wrong answer

The reflex is understandable. When execution lags, organisations look for acceleration. When efficiency disappoints, they look for automation. When processes become sluggish, they look for better systems. Sometimes that is justified, but often a behavioural problem is being addressed with infrastructure — and that rarely works in a sustainable way.

Gallup even shows that the direct manager is the decisive factor in successful AI adoption. Employees whose manager actively supports AI experience its added value many times more strongly than employees without that support. That says almost everything. The tool itself is not the decisive factor; the organisational context into which that tool lands is.

People do not change simply because software becomes available. People change when expectations are clear, role modelling is visible, trust exists, accountability is consistent, and leadership provides direction. In short: when leadership is actually present. Which makes the managerial conclusion rather unavoidable: the ROI of AI is, to a significant extent, determined by the ROI of leadership. And it is precisely that latter variable that still receives remarkably little systematic attention in many organisations.

The question that belongs on every board agenda

The relevant question, therefore, is not merely which technologies still need to be added, but where in the organisation the silent restraining forces are that prevent change from truly landing. That is a fundamentally different — and usually far more uncomfortable — question, because it immediately touches on diffuse ownership, management layers that are losing their function, slowing decision-making, excessive dependence on a few key individuals, conflict avoidance, and psychological distance between leadership and the shop floor.

These are not soft cultural themes. They are hard continuity issues. Many organisations ultimately do not run into trouble because of a lack of market, a lack of capital, or a lack of technology, but because of internal fatigue that remained unnamed for too long.

Why an independent outside perspective is becoming increasingly valuable

More and more boards, owner-managers, and investors sense that this is at play, yet internally it is often not seen sharply enough. That is logical too: those who are part of the system usually recognise systemic wear only late. Which is why there is a growing need for something other than the traditional consultant, trainer, or implementation partner. Not another model, not another offsite, and not another internal improvement programme, but an independent outsider with managerial experience who can quickly identify where the organisation is quietly losing strength, where management layers are no longer delivering what is required, where execution is more vulnerable than reports suggest, and where managerial interventions become necessary before results begin to decline.

That requires sharp observation, pattern recognition, and above all the willingness to place the less comfortable conclusions squarely on the table.

The uncomfortable managerial conclusion

AI will undoubtedly change a large part of the competitive landscape. But let us not pretend that technology automatically creates organisational strength in the process. In the end, companies still win on a far more fundamental capability: their capacity to translate direction into behaviour, responsibility, and execution.

And that is where, for a surprising number of organisations, the real limitation currently sits. Not in the software, but in the leadership on which the enterprise rests every single day. That may be less fashionable than an AI roadmap, but from a boardroom perspective it is considerably more relevant.

A conversation about this?

Technological ambition is visible. Organisational erosion usually is not.

That is precisely why it remains valuable, from time to time, to look with an independent eye at one’s own execution capability, management depth, and internal capacity for change.

Does this sound familiar? I would be pleased to exchange views.

Erik Versteeg — ViaMens
ViaMens advises on leadership, organisational resilience, impact and continuity.