Panic isn’t an AI strategy

Most AI “strategy” right now isn’t strategy at all. It’s a leadership response to panic. The suffocating, staring-at-the-ceiling-at-2am kind of panic that sets in when your board’s watching, your ROI dashboards haven’t budged, and your teams are fracturing under the weight of expectations. WRITER’s latest AI Adoption in the Enterprise report shows just how intense that pressure is: 94% of executives are facing board demands to do more with less. Over three-fourths (78%) are watching AI drive a massive wedge between IT and other lines of business, and 74% say it’s causing tension between executives and employees. Underneath all that is the very real fear that if this doesn’t work, you’re out: 61% of C-suite executives are afraid of losing their jobs over this rollout. It’s not paranoia. In 2025, CEO departures hit a record high, and just in the last few months we’ve seen a high-profile exodus of CEOs from companies like Adobe, Coca-Cola, and Walmart. Boards are resetting expectations for who can lead through the agentic era. In a desperate scramble to hold onto their seats, leaders are trading real progress for the illusion of it. They’re buying tools based on the latest hype, mandating them with little training, and spinning layoffs as “AI efficiency” – anything to convince the street that they’ve got it figured out. Strategy in name, but not in any way that actually turns into revenue. In fact, WRITER’s report found fewer than 1 in 4 executives report significant ROI from AI agents. That’s AI theater. And it’s short-termism at its finest. Playing to survive the next quarter is a career-ending bill that’s already coming due. The leaders who survive this reckoning know AI only becomes a revenue story when you fundamentally rebuild how work gets done, led by the people closest to it. From what I’m seeing on the ground, here are the four things leaders are doing to get to lasting ROI: 1. Audit the drag, not the headcount