You keep writing big cheques for AI advisory packs that promise transformation but deliver only another governance committee and a three-year roadmap no one owns.
The pattern is consistent. Procurement demands a business case with quantified returns before any work starts, so vendors invent plausible numbers. Then the work begins in a separate workstream that never touches your actual P&L owners.
Capability never transfers. Your people attend the workshops, nod at the architecture diagrams, and return to the same incentives and systems. The consultants move to the next client.
This is not a skills shortage problem. It is a refusal to change how decisions get made and who carries the risk. When the vendor leaves, the knowledge walks out with them because no one inside was ever given real authority to alter processes.
Boards keep approving these arrangements because they feel safer than building small internal teams with direct P&L accountability. The safety is an illusion. Every quarter the spend shows up and the competitive gap stays the same.
Stop asking vendors to define your operating model. Force the people who run the revenue and cost lines to redesign their own workflows with AI embedded. If they refuse, the budget should move to someone who will.
Capability is not a report or a headcount number. It is the ability to run experiments, kill the losers fast, and keep the winners inside your own systems without needing external permission each time.