Organizations adopting cutting-edge technologies like AI are racing ahead with implementation plans to ensure they don’t fall behind in the coming wave of disruption. Unfortunately, many will find themselves outside the winners’ circle because they’re taking an overly narrow view in how they’re advancing their high-stakes implementations, centering planning, implementation, and change management efforts exclusively at the project level.
This narrow perspective might allow organizations to move quickly, meeting aggressive implementation targets, but it increases the likelihood of leaving significant issues unaddressed. This risks the possibility that AI/tech investments won’t deliver the intended, high-level financial and operational results or, worse, create new, unexpected, and more damaging problems.
Consider this scenario: a healthcare services provider invests in a system that automatically adds new clinical documentation to patient records. Its leaders greenlight an implementation and change management program focusing exclusively on the tech’s end users, not wanting to create unnecessary costs or distractions. All seems to go well until the offices begin receiving an increasing flood of calls from patients deeply concerned about adverse-sounding test results to which they’ve automatically been alerted—an overlooked “efficiency” of the new system—with many patients posting negative reviews online as a result of not being able to get timely appointments. Unnerved, the clinicians begin openly doubting the wisdom of future adoptions, fostering an atmosphere of heightened change resistance that persists even after the system is reworked.
This setback shows how easily implementations can go wrong, or deliver disappointing results, even when they come in on time and on budget. It points to the need for those engaged in these crucial efforts to take a holistic approach in leading, planning, and advancing tech adoptions, looking beyond teams and departments directly affected by the technology changes and examining impacts at the organizational and executive levels.
This work requires leaders to adjust the lens through which they view and understand adoption initiatives. Instead of just focusing on the capabilities of newly available tools, they need to consider the effect these innovations will have on existing structures, processes, systems, norms, and team members all throughout their organizations. Crucially, they need to lead such efforts with a commitment to driving the enterprise changes needed to ensure that implementations are a big-picture success.
Amidst their competing priorities, leaders can ensure that efforts to implement AI and other technologies are holistic by insisting they include the following actionable steps.
- Seek the wisdom of your people. It’s important to identify team members who understand cross-functional, operational processes and make sure they are brought into tech implementation projects early with a mandate to ask challenging questions and provide feedback on an ongoing basis. Make it the responsibility of your project leaders to listen deeply and assume positive intent when answering these difficult questions.
- Consider the need for new mindsets and behaviors across the organization. Think about how new technologies, and the corresponding process changes, require mindsets and behaviors to shift throughout the enterprise in order to be effective. Factor this into your project plans, timelines, and budgets, accounting for potential training and hiring needs.
- Recognize that AI implementations are iterative: The generative AI technology of even six months ago is very different from today, and will be different again in another six months. Scaling new innovations requires an evolved approach to managing change, moving away from a “point in time” go-live mentality to an iterative and continued conversation with your staff.
In addition, it’s important for leaders to understand how new, visible tools capturing real-time data will significantly elevate workforce expectations and create new obligations within the C-suite. Team members will anticipate that longstanding problems will finally be addressed given their knowledge that top executives now see what they see. Inaction will create an impression of intentional disregard, running the risk of disengagement and attrition. This is consistent with the unintended consequences of engagement surveys, which can lead to reduced scores in as little as 12 months when leaders fail to address identified challenges.
What’s more, leaders should keep in mind that while they’ve spent extensive time and energy contemplating the wisdom of adding AI-enabled tools, their employees are granted little such runway. Intellectually and emotionally, they’re playing catch-up and thus require patience, understanding, and highly tailored communications from their leaders.
The potential consequences of inaction can be dire. To illustrate, a March 2025 study by generative AI platform Writer found that 31% of employees—including 41% of Gen Z workers—admit to “sabotaging” their company’s AI strategy by refusing to adopt AI. As a result, roughly two-third of executives say adoption efforts have led to tension and division within their organization, with 42% suggesting it’s “tearing their company apart.”
The introduction of new technologies provides an opportunity to go beyond addressing any single, departmental, or functional issue and significantly strengthen the whole of the organization—from identifying silos that no longer make sense, to recruiting and training for new, urgently needed capabilities, to improving risk management and institutional governance. What’s more, periods of tech adoption represent key windows of time in which leaders can build their organizations’ narratives and enhance their people’s sense of purpose.
Make no mistake, some organizations will need no reminder to approach the work of tech implementation holistically. These players will set the pace in the age of AI, unlocking significant financial and operational enhancements. Those that don’t will be left playing catchup, risking falling irretrievably behind.
Kate Katz is a Principal at FMG Leading, a human capital advisory firm.
