Let me be very direct, because this moment deserves clarity, not comfort.
Every major transformation starts the same way. There is excitement. There is curiosity. There are early adopters. And there is a phase where organisations convince themselves that doing something small is the same as doing the right thing.

That phase is where we are now.

I hear it everywhere. Organisations add a few AI tools. A small group gets enthusiastic. An AI team or centre of excellence is formed. Leadership listens, nods, asks for updates, and then returns to the agenda items that feel more concrete. Revenue. Costs. Quarterly results. Nothing seems broken enough to justify disruption.

And that is exactly why this moment is dangerous.

We have been here before. With the internet. With mobile. With cloud. Each time, organisations underestimated what the technology would actually change. Not because leaders were unintelligent, but because the impact was not immediate. For a while, adding technology to existing ways of working seemed sufficient. Websites were launched. Apps were built. Infrastructure was migrated. Productivity improved locally. Everyone felt reassured.

Until the market shifted.

What followed was never an overnight collapse. It was something slower and far more destructive. Organisations became heavier. Coordination increased. Decision-making slowed. Costs crept up. Margins tightened. By the time leadership realised that this was not a tooling issue but a structural one, competitors had already redesigned how work flowed, how decisions were made, and how value was created.

The gap that opened then rarely closed again.

AI fits this historical pattern with uncomfortable precision, but it accelerates it. Because AI does not simply improve execution. It changes cognition. It changes how decisions are prepared, how fast they move through an organisation, and how much coordination is needed to act. When you introduce that capability without redesigning work, you don’t create advantage. You create tension.

At first, that tension is subtle. Teams produce more. Output increases. Dashboards look promising. Leadership feels justified in waiting. But underneath, the system starts working against itself. More output requires more validation. More AI-generated work requires more coordination. Meetings multiply. Alignment becomes heavier. Middle management turns into a traffic controller rather than a multiplier.

This is where the hidden cost appears.

Margins don’t collapse, but they erode. EBITDA doesn’t fall off a cliff, but it weakens structurally. Not because AI is expensive, but because the organisation still needs too many people to coordinate the same outcome. Cognitive leverage is not realised. Headcount grows without proportional value growth. Opportunity cost rises because decisions take longer than they should.

Meanwhile, a smaller group of organisations makes a different choice. They don’t ask where they can “use AI”. They ask how work should function now that AI exists. They redesign decision flows. They remove unnecessary handovers. They explicitly decide which work disappears, which work is augmented, and which work remains human because judgment and accountability matter. They change incentives. They change operating models. They accept short-term discomfort in exchange for long-term advantage.

The financial impact is profound.

These organisations operate with lower coordination cost. They need fewer people to achieve the same outcomes. Their EBITDA improves not through layoffs, but through leverage. Decisions move faster, which reduces opportunity loss. Pricing becomes sharper because cost structures are more elastic. Innovation becomes cheaper because experimentation no longer fights bureaucracy.

To the outside world, it looks like momentum. Internally, it feels like calm.

This is the part that often gets missed. Markets do not wait politely while organisations “figure it out”. When structurally redesigned organisations enter the same competitive space, they force a repricing of reality. Suddenly, response times that once felt acceptable are too slow. Cost structures that once worked no longer fit. Organisations that did not redesign start compensating with more governance, more reporting, more control. That makes things worse, not better.

Talent notices first. The best people always do. They leave for environments where they can think, decide, and create impact instead of waiting. Innovation becomes exhausting. Boards start asking why continued investment does not translate into results. At that point, the organisation is no longer transforming. It is trying to rescue itself.

This is how organisations really go under. Not with headlines, but with exhaustion.

This is also why leaving AI to a small group is not neutral. It is actively risky. An AI team without leadership redesign creates activity without advantage. It gives a false sense of progress. It postpones the moment where power, roles, and decision rights must be addressed. And postponement is expensive.

Integrated ecosystems like Microsoft make this moment unavoidable. When AI is embedded into documents, communication, meetings, and workflows, it sits inside the organisational nervous system. At that point, inefficiency cannot hide. Unclear ownership becomes visible. Redundant work becomes measurable. Leadership avoidance becomes costly.

AI stops being a tool. It becomes a mirror. And mirrors force a choice.

My belief is not based on fear. It is based on history, data, and what is already happening in the market. Yes, many organisations will struggle in the coming years. Some will disappear. Most will not collapse overnight, but they will lose relevance, margin, and talent because they cannot move at the speed the market now requires.

Not because they didn’t adopt AI. But because they never redesigned work. This is not a call to adopt faster. It is a call to lead.

AI is no longer an innovation topic. It is an operating model decision.

And organisations that continue to treat it as anything less are not standing still. They are slowly designing more work, more friction, and fewer options into their future.

That is why I am deliberately shaking you awake.

Because we have seen this movie before. And this time, the ending will arrive faster than most expect.