For Leaders
The structural work that turns AI momentum into operating outcomes.
Your board wants an AI strategy. Your teams can’t use the tools you bought. You need to show ROI by Q3. And every vendor in your inbox has the answer - as long as it involves their product.
You need someone who has seen this from every angle - the enterprise side, the vendor side, the research - and can tell you what’s actually working.
The Undercurrent
The money goes to what I call the Surface Wave: the visible layer of AI adoption. New tools, pilot programmes, innovation labs, transformation offices. It looks like progress. It feels like momentum.
Beneath that surface sits the Undercurrent - the structural reality that determines whether any of it works. Governance that doesn’t exist. Decision rights that haven’t been defined. Operating models that haven’t changed since before the technology arrived. Capability structures built on assumptions that no longer reflect how work actually gets done.
The Surface Wave is where budgets go. The Undercurrent is where outcomes live. The gap between them is where most AI strategies quietly fail.
The pattern comes from the Endeavor research programme - including analysis of over 531,000 task-level signals that show what’s really happening beneath the org chart.
The Work Behind the Frameworks
I work with the leaders who sit between the board’s AI ambition and the organisation’s operating reality. Whether you run commercial operations, workforce capability, enterprise strategy, or any function navigating AI adoption at scale, the structural challenges are the same.
The starting point is always what’s actually happening - by role group and function, not from the strategy deck. The advisory work includes AI transformation strategy, operating model redesign, governance architecture, and portfolio prioritisation. The output is clear framing, honest assessment, and a plan that reflects the organisation you have, not the one the board presentation describes.
How Engagements Work
Executive Debrief - A focused session to translate the Undercurrent argument into your specific context: after a keynote, the Endeavor Report, or a conference conversation. Typically 60–90 minutes.
Reality Baseline - An evidence-led assessment of where your organisation actually stands on AI adoption - measured by what people do, not what the rollout plan says. Produces a clear routing decision: what can move now, what needs strengthening first, and where the binding constraint sits.
Strategic Advisory - Deeper engagements structured around a defined challenge and timeline. Operating model assessment, governance design, portfolio prioritisation, or transformation roadmap development. Scoped to a specific deliverable, a defined timeline, and a clear outcome.
Tell me what you’re working on and I’ll come back to you within 48 hours.
This consolidated report provides both a roadmap and cautionary tale to help ground my team in both what's possible and what to plan for to ensure a proper pull through to impact human and business performance.
Sam Haider - Senior Director, Strategy, Effectiveness and Technology, Global Commercial Learning and Development, Gilead Sciences
