There’s a question I find myself returning to after almost every transformation programme I’ve been involved in.
The strategy was clear. The investment was real. The people were capable. And yet somewhere between the plan and the outcome, things got harder than they should have. Not dramatically, not in a way that made headlines, but in the slow, grinding way that leaves teams exhausted and leaders quietly wondering what they missed.
The scale of that gap is worth sitting with for a moment. McKinsey research found that large companies globally have captured, on average, only 31% of expected revenue lift and 25% of expected cost savings from their digital and AI transformations. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a systemic problem.
In most cases, the organisations behind those numbers did not miss a skills gap or a budget problem or a communication failure. What they missed was something harder to see on a programme plan: the energy in the room wasn’t matched to the work the programme actually needed.
What I mean by energy
I’m not talking about motivation or enthusiasm, though both matter. I’m talking about something more specific, how people are naturally wired to create and contribute impact.
The GC Index, a framework I have drawn on increasingly in my work, identifies five distinct types of contribution energy. Game Changers are energised by ideas and new possibilities, Strategists by direction and systemic thinking, Implementers by execution and delivery, Polishers by quality and refinement, and Play Makers by the relationships and connections that make everything else function.
Every organisation will display a range of all five, and most programmes need all five at different points of their progression. The problem is that most organisations don’t think about which energy is needed when, and don’t design their teams or their ways of working around that question.
The result is capable people doing work they are not naturally energised to do, not because they cannot do it, but because no one has stopped to ask whether it was the best use of how they are wired. When that happens at scale across a programme team, a function, or an entire organisation, the friction is significant, even when it’s invisible on a RAG status report.
Why transformation programmes feel this so acutely
Transformation by its nature requires different types of energy at different stages. The early phase needs Game Changers and Strategists, the people with the energy to challenge the existing model and build a credible direction. The design and build phase needs Implementers who can translate that direction into something real. The embedding phase needs Polishers and Play Makers who can refine what’s been built and bring people with them.
Most programmes don’t rotate their energy this deliberately. They build a team at the start and keep largely the same people through to the end, regardless of whether their natural contribution profile fits what the programme needs at each stage. Good people end up in the wrong phase, doing work that doesn’t play to how they’re wired, and wondering why it feels harder than it should.
It’s one of the reasons transformation is so consistently exhausting for the people in it. It is not just the scale or complexity of the work, but the quiet misalignment between contribution energy and what’s actually being asked.
And then AI arrived
If this was already worth paying attention to, the introduction of AI into organisations makes it significantly more urgent.
McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI survey found that 88% of organisations now regularly use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% the previous year. But most are still experimenting or piloting, with only around a third beginning to scale. The tools are arriving faster than the organisational thinking about how to use them well.
The pressure on roles is already visible. Deloitte research found that middle management job postings dropped more than 40% between April 2022 and October 2024 as organisations flatten their structures around AI-enabled workflows. The jobs being automated or restructured first are disproportionately the ones built around execution, analysis, and process management, which are in other words the work that Implementers and Polishers have often anchored their contribution around.
This creates a real challenge for organisations that haven’t thought carefully about contribution energy. If your Implementers and Polishers have built their roles largely around the tasks that AI is now absorbing, what happens to their sense of purpose and effectiveness? If your Game Changers and Play Makers are being asked to operate in AI-augmented environments without the space or structure to do what they’re actually energised to do, you are wasting the most irreplaceable resource you have.
The good news is that the appetite is there. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends survey found that 70% of workers are open to offloading work to AI to free up time and focus on more creative, high-impact contribution. People aren’t resistant to this shift. They are waiting for their organisations to design it properly.
The organisations that navigate the AI transition well won’t just be the ones that adopt the tools fastest. They’ll be the ones that understand how their people are wired to contribute, redesign roles and ways of working around that understanding, and create environments where human energy and AI capability genuinely complement each other rather than compete.
What this means in practice
I’m not suggesting every organisation needs to run a GC Index assessment before touching an AI tool. But I am suggesting that the question of how are our people naturally energised to create impact, and are we designing work around that, is one that will separate the organisations that thrive through this transition from the ones that find it as grinding as every other transformation before it.
The leaders I have seen navigate change most effectively are the ones who take this seriously. Not as a soft people question to be handled by HR, but as a strategic design question that sits at the heart of how you build capability, deploy resource, and create the conditions for performance.
Understanding the energy in your organisation is not a nice-to-have. In a period where the nature of work is shifting as fundamentally as it is right now, it may be the most important thing you get right.
The Impact Architect is a newsletter for CFOs and transformation leaders navigating complex change. If this resonated, I’d welcome you sharing it with someone who’d find it useful.
Sources
McKinsey — Rewired for Value: Digital and AI Transformations That Work: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/rewired-for-value-digital-and-ai-transformations-that-work
McKinsey — The State of AI (2025): https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai
Deloitte — Future of the Middle Manager, Human Capital Trends 2025: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends/2025/future-of-the-middle-manager.html
Deloitte — The Future of Work and AI: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/services/consulting/about/future-of-work-ai.html