AI Transformation Is a Leadership Problem

This essay argues that stalled AI adoption should be diagnosed as a leadership failure rather than employee resistance, asking what conditions make not adopting AI the rational choice. Drawing on Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's Extreme Ownership, it lays out a loop of principles—own, believe, simplify, demonstrate, decentralize, learn—and stresses that leaders must use the tools themselves, give teams executable missions, prove one workflow before scaling, push decisions to the people closest to the work, and check incentives before blaming culture.