Slow AI Adoption: Blame The Leaders Not AI's Poor ROI?
Employees are ready for AI until the lay-offs begin
McKinsey must be way behind in its AI consulting revenue as it is now blaming senior management for the delay in its AI payday:
“The biggest barrier to [AI] scaling is not employees—who are ready—but leaders, who are not steering fast enough.”
This is a risky strategy for McKinsey, as these leaders pay their bills. More than a few are waiting for the first big AI system failure to make the news so they can say, “I told you so." to their McKinsey partner.
However, McKinsey does its readers a disservice by “burying the lead” as they roundly bash company leadership for delaying their AI payout when AI’s ROI is less than optimal.
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And I do mean buried. On page 31 of 45, McKinsey delivers the bad news that GenAI has not delivered a meaningful ROI for executives reporting their actual experience.
This is likely the most likely reason why leaders are not rushing to broader GenAI rollouts but don’t tell McKinsey.
It is fine that employees are ready for AI adoption, but wait until the layoffs begin. While McKinsey suggests turning over the reigns to millennials for their AI skills, it skirts the issue of whether millennials have sufficient depth to run these businesses effectively. Without senior input, an AI and the company will likely lose critical knowledge.
For the record, I love AI and believe in its positive impact on our future. Every company should be trialing AI systems, and I agree that there is no excuse for delay.
That said, blaming management for AI adoption rates that fall short of McKinsey’s aggressive expectations is not the way forward.
Shareholders would call these executives prudent even if McKinsey sucker-punches them for “not stepping up.”
Maybe these C-suite execs know something that McKinsey doesn’t?
👉GenAI Not Delivering Return-on-Investment (ROI)
🔹Even McKinsey is forced to admit that all is not rosy with the ROI of GenAI: “Across all industries, surveyed C-level executives report limited returns on enterprise-wide AI investments.”
🔹19 percent say revenues have increased more than 5 percent,
🔹39 percent seeing a moderate increase of 1 to 5 percent, and
🔹36 percent reporting no change.
🔹Only 23 percent see AI delivering any favorable change in costs.
🔹 77% of surveyed C-suite saw a drop in revenue or a maximum increase of 1-5% after adopting GenAI systems.
🔹Shockingly, 77% saw costs increase or remain flat.
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