🌟 Editor's Note
Welcome to the bi-weekly newsletter which focuses on the AI topics that leaders need to know about. In this AI age, it’s not the knowledge of AI tools that sets you apart, but how well they can be integrated in the context of your business.
This requires a focus on your people and helping them through the change above any AI product you can buy.

Quick links

Are 95% Of AI Pilots Failing?

A recent headline creating waves has been the result of the preliminary findings from some AI implementation research conducted by the American University MIT (run as part of project NANDA). The study interviewed 153 executives and discovered that only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools show measurable impact.

The authors of the report unpack differences between industries, and land on a number of interesting observations and challenge a number of commonly held beliefs:

• Mid-sized companies are moving far more quickly than large companies in implementation.

• Resistance to new tools and poor UX amongst staff is harming adoption

• Internal builds of AI fail twice as often.

• Job losses to AI is only actually happening in industries that are already affected significantly by AI.

• What's really holding AI adoption back is not model quality, legal, data or risk, it is that most AI tools don't learn and don’t integrate well into workflows.

Nb Participants were asked to rate common barriers to scale on a 1–10 frequency scale, where 10 represented the most frequently encountered obstacles.

There are some limitations of the report: limited pool of companies, short window post implementation being judged, and the focus solely on generative AI whilst ignoring other forms of AI. But the observations do provide some directional insight for leaders.
For instance, the report notes that organisations that succeed do three things differently: they empower line managers rather than having central AI functions; they buy rather than build; they select tools that integrate deeply while adapting over time.

^{Takeaways For Leaders}

- Most GenAI pilots don’t reach production P&L in six months” is the fairer reading of the report, but press headlines have been sensationalised
- However, some of the findings are in common with other recent academic reports: individuals are benefiting from Generative AI but very few companies are feeling the financial benefit.
- Another common theme rising here - a lack of executive sponsorship and challenges with change management are high on the list of reasons that failures occur.
- A learning gap is also cited as to why pilots stall: it’s not models/regulation, but that tools don’t retain feedback or adapt to workflow context.

Focusing on people, training and change management, leaders owning the change: these will keep coming up for reasons that AI fails to deliver to its potential.

Link to the MT report is here

_{AI Adoption Gaps in Product Teams: What Leaders Need To Know} 

A survey by workflow tool Miro of 2000 engineers, product and design professionals has much for leaders to take away (and be confident about in their AI transformations).

Respondents expressed that they are excited and energised by AI, not anxious or stressed. But over half don’t know when to use it and 1 in 3 are not using AI at all - with product teams being the lowest.

The survey also asked specific questions about the respondent’s view of their leader’s approach to AI which may be reassuring for now - but also cautionary that expectations are high. The worries that people have about AI are about lack of skills, or having no AI skills at all - a third of respondents. This is an alert for leaders that they must take steps in this area.

A reassuring factor about AI use among these groups is that they see it not just as something that improves performance, but can improve workplace wellbeing and boost job satisfaction. This is a far cry from the fears we hear from some headlines that AI is about to take jobs and make people miserable.

^{Takeaways For Leaders}

A reassuring number that leaders may appreciate is that 61% of respondents say their company leaders understand how to use AI to support their work.

Whilst confidence is high, there is a gap that 41% see between leadership intention and talk about AI and concrete actions.

45% want formal AI training programs, 37% want clarity on the company’s AI adoption strategy and 35% want their leaders to communicate AI’s business impact.

The end line from this report from Miro is intended as a clear message to leaders:
“The shift is already happening. Lead your team through it”

Are Your Team Sabotaging AI Rollouts ?

Writer, a generative AI platform developer, have released The Writer 2025 Generative AI survey, drawing on experiences of 1,600 workers - 800 C Suite execs and 800 employees. Among the insights, 66% of execs shared that generative AI was leading to tension and division, and that 41% of Gen Z employees are actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy !

The factors that lead to these insights point to a lack of alignment and collaboration. Many report AI applications being created in isolation, with IT teams not collaborating with the employees who will use these tools. Many execs report adoption challenges, and nearly half of employees had to figure out AI on their own.

Another finding of the study however is that there can be an unrealistic expectation of the timeframe within which a return on investment in AI can be realised. And when that timescale is 2-3 years or more, this is halting investment. This is leading to workers bringing in their own AI tools, exposing the company to risk of data breaches and other security issues.

^{Takeaways For Leaders}

Whilst some of the stats are sobering, many issues around siloed behaviours and developing collaborative ways of working across departments are issues that leaders have faced before in previous transformations and can work through.

The ambitions of how quickly AI will provide a return is one for leaders to ponder. We are living through an age where transformation now will set the stage for a company’s relevance for coming decades. Taking a short term view will lead to a very high risk that your company will be left behind - and business history is littered with examples where companies failed to transform and over time dwindled and in many cases disappeared

Writer.com AI Adoption Survey

🔥 In Case You Missed It…

Klarna’s U-turn after replacing 700 workers with AI

Klarna, the ‘buy now, pay later’ loan company from Sweden removed 700 mainly customer facing roles, citing that these roles could now be performed by AI. In an error of judgment as to what AI would be capable of, many customers complained leading Klarna to admit that humans did the job better. They have started the process of putting humans back in the role that AI was due to replace.

🏆 Tools, Podcasts, Products Or Toys We’re Playing With This Week

Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image)

The release of the picture editing software from Google has lit up feeds with examples of how well it manages photo manipulation compared to competitors. In skilled hands, the results it can achieve, especially when combined with video editing tools feels light years ahead of what AI could produce even a year ago.

If you need any inspiration of what to prompt, ask a friendly GPT for creative ideas or upload a picture into Nano Banana along with one of these prompts:

“Turn me into a medieval knight, wearing ornate armor, standing in front of a castle at sunset. Keep my facial features and expression exactly the same.”

“Make me a superhero in a cinematic comic-book style poster. Keep me recognizable as myself.”

“Make it look like I’m on a red carpet at a film premiere, with photographers and flashes.”

“Turn this picture into a Pixar-style 3D animation character that still looks like me.”

Available in the Gemini app for both free and paid users

Nano Banana Link

Did You Know? 

Till next time,

And The Rest Is Leadership