“When this transformation fails to deliver ROI, who specifically will be held responsible—and are they in the room right now?”
C-Suite Briefing Note: The Budget Risk of “Distributed Blame”
The Strategic Context The 2026 CIO Agenda reveals that 91% of your peers are increasing GenAI spending, yet Gartner openly admits that only 1 in 5 AI projects deliver ROI. This $600B+ “Path A” trajectory is fueled by a search for career insurance rather than operational success.
(NOTE: Here is the link to the post in which five RAM 2025 AI models analyze 10 of Gartner’s more recent graphs)
The 6th Question Analysis: If your answer to the accountability question is “the implementation partner,” “the vendor,” or “Gartner recommended them,” you are currently purchasing a shield, not a sword.
- The Shield Trap: Outsourcing accountability to external analysts creates a “consensus shortcut” that bypasses the hard work of Phase 0 readiness.
- The Cost of Safety: This diffused blame is the primary driver behind the 35-year stagnation of client success rates at 20%, even as consulting revenues have surged to $350B+.
- The Outcome: When failure is distributed, nobody has the incentive to look at the brutal facts of organizational misalignment before deployment.
The Phase 0 Alternative: To turn the tide in 2026, the accountable leader must move from a Map (following the crowd) to a Compass (internal alignment).
- True Ownership: If the answer to “who is responsible” is “us,” the organization must conduct a Hansen Fit Score assessment to ensure the technology doesn’t simply amplify existing gaps.
- Predictive Resilience: By taking ownership, leaders shift from a “Miracle Moment” (the Doom Loop) to a 20-Mile March (the Flywheel) where success is engineered through readiness, not hoped for through a press release.
Jim Collins’ Flywheel vs. Hansen Phase 0
Jim Collins showed us how great companies win: not through big bets or miracle moves, but by building momentum—disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action—until success compounds. The Flywheel is about sustained motion.
The Hansen Models explain why most organizations never get the Flywheel turning in the first place.
Collins assumes the Flywheel is mechanically sound. Hansen asks the uncomfortable prerequisite question: are the agents, decision rights, incentives, and operating context aligned enough for momentum to occur at all?
That’s Phase 0.
Without Phase 0, organizations don’t spin a Flywheel—they enter the Doom Loop: new technology, new consultant, new strategy, same misalignment. Motion without traction. Effort without compounding.
The Flywheel is the destination.
Phase 0 is the ignition system.
Trying to spin the Flywheel without Phase 0 is like pushing harder on a wheel that isn’t connected to the axle.
Momentum doesn’t fail because people lack effort—it fails because alignment was never established.
Collins described the pattern. Hansen operationalized the prerequisite.
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Procurement Insights
Understanding The 6th Accountability Question
Posted on December 27, 2025
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C-Suite Briefing Note: The Budget Risk of “Distributed Blame”
The Strategic Context The 2026 CIO Agenda reveals that 91% of your peers are increasing GenAI spending, yet Gartner openly admits that only 1 in 5 AI projects deliver ROI. This $600B+ “Path A” trajectory is fueled by a search for career insurance rather than operational success.
(NOTE: Here is the link to the post in which five RAM 2025 AI models analyze 10 of Gartner’s more recent graphs)
The 6th Question Analysis: If your answer to the accountability question is “the implementation partner,” “the vendor,” or “Gartner recommended them,” you are currently purchasing a shield, not a sword.
The Phase 0 Alternative: To turn the tide in 2026, the accountable leader must move from a Map (following the crowd) to a Compass (internal alignment).
Jim Collins’ Flywheel vs. Hansen Phase 0
Jim Collins showed us how great companies win: not through big bets or miracle moves, but by building momentum—disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action—until success compounds. The Flywheel is about sustained motion.
The Hansen Models explain why most organizations never get the Flywheel turning in the first place.
Collins assumes the Flywheel is mechanically sound. Hansen asks the uncomfortable prerequisite question: are the agents, decision rights, incentives, and operating context aligned enough for momentum to occur at all?
That’s Phase 0.
Without Phase 0, organizations don’t spin a Flywheel—they enter the Doom Loop: new technology, new consultant, new strategy, same misalignment. Motion without traction. Effort without compounding.
The Flywheel is the destination.
Phase 0 is the ignition system.
Trying to spin the Flywheel without Phase 0 is like pushing harder on a wheel that isn’t connected to the axle.
Momentum doesn’t fail because people lack effort—it fails because alignment was never established.
Collins described the pattern. Hansen operationalized the prerequisite.
-30-
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