Forrester's January 2026 research for SAP identifies fragmented strategies, siloed data, and poor communication of vision as the core barriers preventing organisations from achieving lasting transformation. As only 6% of organisations are true leaders in transformation, the path forward, they argue, requires moving beyond ad hoc initiatives toward a repeatable, people-centric capability for change — one that embeds cultural alignment and genuine cross-functional thinking into organisational DNA. The diagnosis is clear. What's missing is the architecture to actually do it.

Many other studies warn about this dilemma: only 6% of companies are future-built or true leaders in transformation, 84% of leaders feel underprepared for future disruptions, and 62% of CEOs say they need to rewrite their business playbook to win rather than play to existing strengths. Those who do engage their people in understanding change and strategy, and in innovating work, generate 3× shareholder returns (see BCG, Forrester, McKinsey, the IBM CEO study, the World Economic Forum & McKinsey, Gallup, and many other studies). So how do you really get your people to participate and engage in thinking for 'what next' — to secure success for your business or agenda, and to avoid the fragmented strategies, siloed data, and poor communication of vision that are the core barriers to lasting transformation?

The diagnosis is clear. What's missing is the architecture to actually do it.

Into that gap, organisations are increasingly turning to AI. But two recent Harvard Business Review studies suggest this is compounding the problem rather than solving it. The first finds that AI systems use markedly different question mixes than human leaders — overemphasising interpretive analysis while underweighting the productive and subjective questions that surface what's unsaid, what's at stake, and what should actually happen next. These imbalances create blind spots, skew discussions, and subtly steer outcomes — often invisibly.

The second study introduces an even sharper critique: LLMs exhibit a consistent bias toward 'trendslop' — recommending strategies that align with managerial buzzwords rather than context-specific strategic logic. As the researchers put it, an LLM is not the colleague who stress-tests assumptions and pushes back when everyone gets comfortable. On strategy, it behaves more like a junior consultant parroting what's popular rather than what's right for a particular situation. A March 2026 study by Cornell University warns of the same thing: the employees most excited and inspired by 'visionary' corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.

Together, these three studies describe an organisation that is fragmented in its processes, over-reliant on AI that flattens rather than sharpens thinking, and systematically blind to the subjective, experiential, and contrarian perspectives that genuine strategic insight requires.

Forrester calls for cross-functional structures that drive alignment. HBR warns that AI underweights subjective and productive questions. The organisations that will think well about complex change are not those that delegate sensemaking to AI summaries or strategy documents. They are those that build the structural conditions for genuinely plural, epistemically diverse collective intelligence — and retain human judgement at the centre of it.

This is why we built Hunome, in our startup, for collective sensemaking — with human collective ingenuity in the driver's seat and AI helping — building a thinking permaculture and a deliberative intelligence layer for an organisation to understand change and 'what next' for aligned action.