Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
Eagle Hill poll links missed tech returns to underestimated changes in daily work
Eagle Hill Consulting found 51% of 200 senior US leaders say recent technology investments fell short of their intended outcomes. The reason they gave most often was underestimating how the new tools would change day-to-day work.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- Only 35% of respondents said their organization considered how new technology would affect day-to-day work before rolling it out.
- Roughly a third named continued use of legacy processes and workarounds as a primary reason their investments did not deliver expected value.
- Ipsos ran the poll from March 3 to 9, 2026, among director-level or higher decision-makers at US organizations with at least $100 million in annual revenue.
- Peak Scientific's Mike Hughes wrote that his team classed its AI program as a change management initiative before it asked for any budget.
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Why it matters
- decision Funding that stops at training and go-live leaves the reinforcement stage without money, and Hughes names that stage as the one most programs shortchange.
- constraint Putting tool choice last means a vendor shortlist has to wait until the organization can define, in measurable terms, success for frontline staff.
- exposure Leaders who judge adoption by usage counts can miss teams that have gone back to old workarounds, the behaviour Eagle Hill says separates weaker returns from stronger ones.
The 51% figure is softer than it looks. A respondent counted toward it if their organization's recent technology investments failed to fully achieve the intended outcomes [1], so a project that delivered most of its value still lands in the total. That is about 102 of the 200 people polled [2], each judging their own organization's spending [3].
The planning figure is more useful. Turned around, it means 65% of respondents' organizations did not weigh the effect on day-to-day work before rollout [1]. Eagle Hill's report places the loss of value after go-live, when employees keep old processes or work around the new tools [6]. "Organizations often think the finish line is go-live, but that's really where the hard work begins," said Melissa Jezior, Eagle Hill's president and chief executive [8]. She added: "Technology alone doesn't create value. People using it differently do." [9]
A skeptic would note that this is a consultancy's survey [18], and that a consultancy has reason to find the hard part of a project arriving after the software is live. The objection is fair. It is a reason to treat the poll as one firm's sample of 200 executives [3]. The second source comes from inside a company: Mike Hughes, group service director and an executive board member at Peak Scientific, in a column published Sept. 29, 2026 [12]. "When we built our AI initiative, we treated the technology selection as the last decision, not the first," Hughes wrote [13].
His distinction changes when a project counts as finished. "An IT rollout is done when the software is live and stable. A change initiative is done when behavior has actually shifted, when the workforce has adopted a new way of working and kept using it after the initial excitement fades," he wrote [14]. His team applied the ADKAR model before the investment was approved, and he wrote that reinforcement, its final stage, is the one most programs underfund [15]. Eagle Hill's description of organizations with stronger returns is close to his: they start with the work, measure changed behaviour instead of usage alone, and run adoption as an ongoing discipline [10].
The trade-off is speed. Choosing the tool last puts the work analysis and a definition of frontline success ahead of procurement, and that pushes the purchase back. Hughes put one question to organizations before any AI project reaches a vendor shortlist: "can your organization state, in specific and measurable terms, what success looks like for the frontline employee who has to use this system?" [17] Measurement adds cost as well. Hughes tracks what he called return on employee through employee net promoter score, attrition, time-to-competency and burnout reduction [16].
The case for funding adoption alongside the tool rests on Hughes's practice and Eagle Hill's account more than on the poll's percentages. The survey does not report what respondents spent on change management, or whether higher spending went with better outcomes. In my view the evidence supports a narrower decision this quarter, about how long the money lasts after launch. "Many organizations treat technology change management as a training and communications exercise," Jezior said [11]. A budget built that way ends at go-live. Next quarter it shows up as teams running two processes, like the Eagle Hill client whose staff completed training on a new ERP system and kept running legacy processes alongside it [7].
What to watch
- Whether Eagle Hill or Ipsos publishes data tying the level of change-management spending to the outcomes respondents reported.
- A repeat poll showing whether the share of organizations that plan for daily-work impacts before rollout rises from 35%.
- Peak Scientific reporting its return-on-employee results, such as attrition and time-to-competency, once its AI program has run past launch.