75% of AI Strategies Are for Show. Is Yours?

<p>Here&#39;s a Spotify-ready description:</p><p><strong>75% of AI Strategies Are for Show. Is Yours?</strong></p><p>A former Lululemon CIO just said the quiet part out loud — and Steve thinks every executive needs to hear it.</p><p>This week, Steve digs into Julie Averill&#39;s New York Times opinion piece on what&#39;s actually happening with AI inside real companies. Averill spent eight years as CIO at Lululemon and thirty years in tech before that, so this isn&#39;t sideline commentary. It&#39;s someone who took the vendor meetings, ran the pilots, and felt the board pressure.</p><p>Steve unpacks her two big ideas: <strong>AI wishing</strong> — treating the technology like a magic wand that lets you skip the hard work of fixing messy data and broken systems — and <strong>AI washing</strong>, where companies under pressure describe what they hope will happen as if it already had. The numbers are sobering: 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots never delivered results, 75% of executives admit their AI strategy is more for show, and roughly a third of hiring managers who cut a role because of AI have already rehired for it.</p><p>Plus: why layoffs announced in the name of AI efficiency are often just moving work onto the people who stay, why 44% of Gen Z workers say they&#39;re actively sabotaging their company&#39;s AI rollout, and the autopilot analogy Steve keeps coming back to — AI holds the course, but people know where you&#39;re going and why.</p><p>Two questions to take into your week: What did that vendor actually ask about your business? And have you redesigned the work before cutting the role?</p><p><strong>Links:</strong></p><ul><li>Julie Averill, &quot;I Helped Run Lululemon. Companies Need to Stop Kidding Themselves About A.I.&quot; — The New York Times, Aug 3, 2026</li><li>MIT Project NANDA report (via Fortune): https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/</li><li>Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas May job cuts report: https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-may-job-cuts-rise-16-from-april-highest-may-total-since-2020/</li><li>Robert Half May 2026 labor market update: https://www.roberthalf.com/us/en/insights/research/may-2026-labor-market-update-for-employers-and-job-seekers</li><li>Writer + Workplace Intelligence enterprise AI adoption survey: https://writer.com/blog/enterprise-ai-adoption-2026/</li></ul><p><br></p><p><br></p>