AI doesn’t cure bad design.
It institutionalises it.
Boards are being sold shortcuts: stand up an “agent”, bolt it onto today’s workflow, declare victory. That’s agentic AI washing. It’s lipstick on a pig: a shiny label on the same clunky process, with the same economics. Gartner is blunt: more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by 2027, a trend fuelled by “agent washing”, with only about 130 truly agentic vendors among thousands.
The pressure is real. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index flags a widening capacity gap: 53% of leaders say productivity must rise while 80% of workers report lacking the time or energy to deliver it. That gap tempts organisations to automate first and ask questions later.
Resist it. Harvard Business Review cautions that teams are automating work they don’t fully understand, which locks in poor choices at machine speed.
Evidence says redesign beats rush. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI finds bottom-line impact arrives where leaders rework workflows and governance as they deploy gen AI, rather than just dropping AI into yesterday’s steps.
So at your next Board meeting
• Ensure management proves the underlying process has been simplified before any automation proposal.
• Require a clear control model: decision rights, evidence of outcomes, and a tested rollback plan.
• Approve AI only when it changes the economics or creates new value, not when it merely speeds existing admin.
Don’t be fooled by the shiny rhetoric.
And don’t waste money putting lipstick on pigs!
AI won’t fix broken processes.
It’ll just help you fail faster, at scale.
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