AI Has Exposed Your Org Chart. KPMG Has Put Numbers On It.

Boards are turning the screw. KPMG’s 2026 Adaptability Index says 81% of executives feel greater pressure to adapt to disruption, yet only 30% believe their structures, roles and processes can reconfigure quickly enough. That is not a technology gap. It is an operating model gap.

Nick Lichtenberg’s article in Fortune is just as blunt: what is breaking is not the balance sheet or the tech stack, but the invisible machinery underneath — the habits, assumptions, unwritten rules and decision bottlenecks that slow everything down.

For a busy executive, the takeaway is straightforward. AI will not make a rigid organisation more adaptable. It will simply make the rigidity more visible, and often more painful.

More AI is not more adaptability

KPMG’s data makes an awkward point for leadership teams: accelerated innovation does not automatically produce adaptability. For instance, in one spot, they highlight the statistic, “Only 43% of executives say decisions are happening faster or with greater clarity, despite 63% using more data.” The message is clear: you can be good at building new things and still be poor at changing how the organisation works.

That is the real trap. Most companies respond to disruption by buying more technology, not by redesigning how decisions are made, how teams are deployed, or how people learn. KPMG says organisations are nearly twice as likely to increase tech spending as to invest in employee training, while 46% report burnout and change fatigue as an unintended consequence.

So yes, AI matters. But if the underlying system is unclear, AI will not create clarity. It will scale confusion.

What the index is really saying

KPMG’s framework is useful because it separates adaptability into three dimensions: cultural, ecosystem and strategic, with structural readiness underneath them. That matters, because most transformation programmes focus on the visible layer and ignore the mechanics that determine whether anything moves.

Cultural adaptability is about whether people feel able to speak up, challenge assumptions and learn fast. Ecosystem adaptability is about whether partnerships are durable and useful, rather than merely contractual. Strategic adaptability is about whether the organisation can sense change, decide quickly and execute without endless friction.

The missing ingredient is structural readiness: who decides what, how authority is distributed, and whether talent can be moved quickly enough to matter. That is the bit too many boards wave through because it is harder than buying software.

The executive problem

KPMG’s figures point to a familiar leadership failure: more data, but not faster decisions. That is what happens when information flow improves faster than decision rights.

It also explains why psychological safety remains so low on the list of priorities. Fewer than 10% of leaders reported increased psychological safety as a key behaviour change, yet without it people will hide bad news, avoid challenge and quietly work around the system instead of improving it. In that environment, AI does not create openness. It amplifies silence.

Burnout sits in the same category. If organisations demand more adaptability while keeping the same hierarchy, the same pace and fewer people, the result is fatigue, not resilience. You cannot talk your way out of that.

What to do next

Stop treating adaptability as a slogan and start treating it as design.

1. Pick one decision process and rewrite it.
   Name who decides, who advises, what data matters and how quickly the decision must be made.
2. Fund training as seriously as technology.
   If you are increasing AI spend without building judgement, literacy and critical thinking, you are widening the capability gap.
3. Build psychological safety into the cadence of work.
   Use premortems, red-team reviews and explicit challenge in leadership meetings. Do not rely on culture statements.
4. Simplify the structure.
   Fewer layers, clearer boundaries and more transparent accountability beat another reorganisation deck.
5. Pilot AI where it shortens the path from signal to decision.
   Start small. Make it useful. Prove that it improves judgement rather than drowning people in output.

The takeaway

KPMG and Fortune are describing the same reality from different angles: the modern corporation is trying to run 2026 complexity on a legacy org chart. That is why so many AI programmes feel busy but not transformative.

The lesson for executives is not “move faster”. It is “redesign the system so speed, with direction, is possible — because speed without direction means running fast in circles”. Until the org chart, decision rights and talent deployment change, AI will mostly expose the gap between ambition and capability.

Is your team connected by conviction — or merely complying with slogans?

Please share your stories below. I’d love to hear where beliefs have unlocked culture, and where they have trapped it.

This thinking sits at the heart of Andrew’s and my forthcoming book, HumanCorps: Redesigning Organisations for Wisdom in the AI Age. The book argues that organisations must be designed as living systems: clear on purpose, explicit on decision rights, fluent in human + AI collaboration, and able to adapt without exhausting their people.