I recently spent three days locked in a room with the senior leadership team of a large mid-sized enterprise.
They had flown me in because they were panicked.
Their competitors were launching AI tools, and their board was asking, "What is our AI strategy?"
They expected me to give them a list of software to buy.
Instead, we spent 48 hours without even opening a laptop.
Here is what happened, and what they learned.
1. The "Innovation Theatre" Diagnosis
When we started, they proudly showed me their "Digital Lab".
They had bean bags, a 3D printer, and a team of data scientists building pilots that never went anywhere.
I had to tell them the hard truth: "You are not innovating. You are performing Innovation Theatre."
They were building cool toys, but they weren't solving business problems.
Lesson: If your innovation team is separated from the P&L, you don't have an innovation strategy. You have a hobby.
2. The "Silo" Wake-Up Call
I asked the Head of Sales and the Head of Operations to draw their data flows on a whiteboard.
They couldn't connect them.
The Sales data was in Salesforce. The Operations data was in an ERP from 2010.
I told them: "You cannot build AI on top of this. AI needs liquid data. You have concrete data."
Lesson: You don't have an AI problem. You have a data architecture problem.
3. The "Turkeys Voting for Christmas" Problem
By Day 2, the mood shifted. They realised that true transformation would mean making some of their own roles obsolete.
The Head of Customer Service realised that 80% of his department’s work could be automated.
This is the "Turkeys Voting for Christmas" moment.
Most leaders will sabotage AI to protect their empire. This team was brave enough to admit that their "Empire" was sinking.
Lesson: You cannot ask the people running the old model to build the new one. They will always compromise the future to protect the present.
4. The Outcome
They didn't buy any new software that week.
Instead, they killed three "zombie projects" and redirected the budget to a single, strategic goal: Unifying their data.
They realised that until they fixed the foundation, buying AI tools was just setting money on fire.
The Bottom Line
If you are a senior leader, stop looking for a "Chief AI Officer" to save you.
The bottleneck is not technology. The bottleneck is the courage to dismantle your own silos.