There’s no AI-ready culture. There’s an adaptable one.
In Harvard Business Review, Sarah Jensen Clayton, Michael Welch, and Khoi Tu of Korn Ferry reach the conclusion CoAdapta was built on: technology changes in weeks, but the ways of working that capture its value take far longer. The advantage goes to organizations that create value from change, run the business and change it at the same time, and put data around their decisions.
What the research found.
In their words, briefly. Read the full article at Harvard Business Review.
“There is no such thing as an AI-ready culture.”
“Readiness suggests a fixed destination; AI keeps moving the destination.”
Sarah Jensen Clayton, Michael Welch, and Khoi Tu of Korn Ferry, Harvard Business Review, October 5, 2026
Eighty-six percent of employers expect AI to fundamentally change their business by 2030 (World Economic Forum), yet most organizations were built for an era of scarce information, slow-building expertise, and decisions made by hierarchy.
The authors set out to define an “AI-ready” culture and concluded there isn’t one. AI keeps moving the target, so what matters is a culture of adaptability: the capacity to keep changing how work gets done.
They describe five shifts that build it: impact over activity, experimentation over certainty, decision systems over decision makers, enterprise thinking over local optimization, learning velocity over expertise. Three of them are exactly where CoAdapta works, and what DeterminALI was built to do.
Value creation, not activity
Leaders celebrate pilots, licenses, and training completions because they are easy to count. The article calls this a false sense of progress: people look busy while the work and the value it creates stay the same.
- How CoAdapta builds it
- Before a change starts, we agree with leadership what it should be worth: hours freed, costs avoided, capacity to grow. Then we track that, not logins.
- In DeterminALI
- Value is recorded as it lands. Sponsors get an Investment Statement of what the change bought, line by line, and a Value Cockpit that shows progress against plan.
Improve today. Transform for tomorrow. At the same time.
Adaptable organizations can both perform, running the business reliably today, and transform, changing it for tomorrow, with the judgment to know which the moment needs. Most are wired to perform. Too much change causes whiplash; too little leaves them stuck.
- How CoAdapta builds it
- We help leaders use and improve what they already have while they explore and build what comes next, sequencing change so the business keeps its rhythm.
- In DeterminALI
- Readiness is measured team by team, so leaders can see who can take on more change now and who needs to keep the core running steady.
Data around the decision. People make the call.
Adaptable cultures put better intelligence around the people closest to a decision, keep the limits of their authority clear, and hold people accountable for the call. In the article’s investment-firm example, the AI challenges assumptions but “does not get a vote.”
- How CoAdapta builds it
- We give leaders data on who is ready, where adoption will stall, and what each option is worth, then leave the decision with them.
- In DeterminALI
- A deterministic engine turns evidence into one checkable next move, checked against a published line. AI assists but never decides, and every conclusion shows how it was reached.
Principles worth repeating.
The research points at the same principles we design around.
- Value, not activity
“Measure work by the value it creates, not the activity it generates.” Usage dashboards tell you people are busy. A value statement tells you the change paid off.
- Run it and change it
Performing and transforming are not opposites to choose between. Leaders who can see readiness team by team can decide where to push change and where to hold steady.
- Data around the decision, not instead of it
“But the AI does not get a vote.” DeterminALI works the same way: evidence in, a checkable next move out, and a person makes the call.
- Readiness is built by doing
Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab studied 51 successful enterprise AI deployments: every one was built iteratively, and 61% had at least one failed attempt before it worked.
Sources.
- There’s No Such Thing as an AI-Ready Culture Sarah Jensen Clayton, Michael Welch, Khoi Tu. Harvard Business Review, October 5, 2026. Written from Korn Ferry’s culture research, CHRO interviews, and client work.
Research the article draws on.
- The Future of Jobs Report 2025 World Economic Forum, January 2025.
- The Enterprise AI Playbook Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2026.
- Workforce planning insights Korn Ferry, 2026.
- Culture: the secrets to success Korn Ferry, 2026.
- How Mastercard builds an AI culture through adoption and experimentation Mastercard, 2025.
- Peer-reviewed study cited in the article APA PsycNet, 2021.
CoAdapta is not affiliated with Harvard Business Review, Korn Ferry, Stanford University, the World Economic Forum, or Mastercard. Quotations are brief and attributed; the full findings are in the original sources.
Change that drives value. The data to make great decisions.
Start with data on how ready your people are, and where the change will stall. The readiness check is free.