By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
In the last few days, several people have used the phrase “the speed of consequence.”
That phrase matters more than most realize.
Because when you strip away the hype, the tools, and the terminology, one uncomfortable truth remains:
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation.
Only the speed at which failure reveals itself.
The mistake we keep making
Every technology era begins with the same assumption:
This time, the technology is different.
ERP was different.
Digital transformation was different.
AI is different.
And yet the failure rate has remained stubbornly consistent—70–80%—for over four decades (some place it as high as 88%).
That persistence tells us something critical: the constraint was never the technology.
What actually worked in 1998
In 1998, during work for the Department of National Defence, we were brought in to “automate” a procurement system that was failing badly.
Next-day delivery performance sat at 51%, against a 90% requirement.
The instinctive response was predictable:
“We need to automate.”
Instead, we paused and asked why.
Why orders arrived late in the day.
Why incentives encouraged sandbagging.
Why suppliers struggled at customs.
Why price volatility made contracts irrelevant within hours.
Why delivery, cost, and service quality were being treated as separate problems.
Only after understanding the agents, the incentives, the timing, and the governance gaps did we automate.
The result:
- 97.3% next-day delivery
- 23% sustained cost reduction over seven years
- No black box
- No blind trust
- No “best practice” theater
That wasn’t luck.
It was readiness before deployment.
What didn’t change after that
Fast forward through ERP, e-procurement, cloud, digital, and now AI.
What do we still see?
- Organizations skipping readiness assessment
- Governance assumed, not measured
- Incentives misaligned
- Accountability deferred
- Blame assigned after failure
- Analysts and advisors providing orientation, not outcomes
The pattern didn’t repeat.
It never stopped.
We just noticed it at different points in time.
What did change
Only this:
The tolerance for being wrong.
In the ERP era, governance gaps took years to surface.
Budgets were exceeded quietly.
Projects lingered.
Post-mortems were delayed.
In the AI era, the same gaps surface in seconds.
Autonomous systems don’t wait for steering committees.
They don’t forgive missing controls.
They don’t pause for cultural alignment.
They act.
And when they act on assumptions you never tested, the consequences are immediate.
This is why Phase 0 exists
Phase 0 isn’t a methodology add-on.
It’s not caution.
It’s not academic rigor.
It’s protection.
Protection against:
- automating broken incentives
- scaling ungoverned decisions
- embedding bias at machine speed
- mistaking confidence for readiness
Phase 0 asks one question before any technology is deployed:
Is this organization actually ready to absorb what it’s about to automate?
Most frameworks assume the answer is yes.
History says otherwise.
The illusion we need to let go of
The industry still behaves as if transformation failure is episodic:
This project failed.
That rollout struggled.
This implementation underperformed.
That framing is comforting—and wrong.
Failure isn’t episodic.
It’s continuous, until readiness intervenes.
AI didn’t create this reality.
It just removed the grace period.
The real shift leaders must make
This moment doesn’t require better predictions.
It requires better admission.
Admission that:
- orientation isn’t execution
- consensus isn’t readiness
- compliance isn’t alignment
- automation amplifies whatever already exists
The leaders who succeed in the AI era won’t be the ones who know the most.
They’ll be the ones willing to ask why before they automate—
and to measure readiness before they scale.
The bottom line
In 1998, we fixed procurement by asking why before we automated.
In 2026, AI is forcing organizations to relearn the same lesson—only faster.
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation.
Only the tolerance for getting it wrong.
That’s why Phase 0 isn’t optional anymore.
THE TRILOGY SERIES
- Nothing Changed — Except the Speed (Today’s Post)
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Procurement Insights
Nothing Changed — Except the Speed
Posted on January 11, 2026
0
By Jon Hansen | Procurement Insights | January 2026
In the last few days, several people have used the phrase “the speed of consequence.”
That phrase matters more than most realize.
Because when you strip away the hype, the tools, and the terminology, one uncomfortable truth remains:
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation.
Only the speed at which failure reveals itself.
The mistake we keep making
Every technology era begins with the same assumption:
ERP was different.
Digital transformation was different.
AI is different.
And yet the failure rate has remained stubbornly consistent—70–80%—for over four decades (some place it as high as 88%).
That persistence tells us something critical: the constraint was never the technology.
What actually worked in 1998
In 1998, during work for the Department of National Defence, we were brought in to “automate” a procurement system that was failing badly.
Next-day delivery performance sat at 51%, against a 90% requirement.
The instinctive response was predictable:
Instead, we paused and asked why.
Why orders arrived late in the day.
Why incentives encouraged sandbagging.
Why suppliers struggled at customs.
Why price volatility made contracts irrelevant within hours.
Why delivery, cost, and service quality were being treated as separate problems.
Only after understanding the agents, the incentives, the timing, and the governance gaps did we automate.
The result:
That wasn’t luck.
It was readiness before deployment.
What didn’t change after that
Fast forward through ERP, e-procurement, cloud, digital, and now AI.
What do we still see?
The pattern didn’t repeat.
It never stopped.
We just noticed it at different points in time.
What did change
Only this:
The tolerance for being wrong.
In the ERP era, governance gaps took years to surface.
Budgets were exceeded quietly.
Projects lingered.
Post-mortems were delayed.
In the AI era, the same gaps surface in seconds.
Autonomous systems don’t wait for steering committees.
They don’t forgive missing controls.
They don’t pause for cultural alignment.
They act.
And when they act on assumptions you never tested, the consequences are immediate.
This is why Phase 0 exists
Phase 0 isn’t a methodology add-on.
It’s not caution.
It’s not academic rigor.
It’s protection.
Protection against:
Phase 0 asks one question before any technology is deployed:
Most frameworks assume the answer is yes.
History says otherwise.
The illusion we need to let go of
The industry still behaves as if transformation failure is episodic:
That framing is comforting—and wrong.
Failure isn’t episodic.
It’s continuous, until readiness intervenes.
AI didn’t create this reality.
It just removed the grace period.
The real shift leaders must make
This moment doesn’t require better predictions.
It requires better admission.
Admission that:
The leaders who succeed in the AI era won’t be the ones who know the most.
They’ll be the ones willing to ask why before they automate—
and to measure readiness before they scale.
The bottom line
In 1998, we fixed procurement by asking why before we automated.
In 2026, AI is forcing organizations to relearn the same lesson—only faster.
Nothing fundamental has changed in transformation.
Only the tolerance for getting it wrong.
That’s why Phase 0 isn’t optional anymore.
THE TRILOGY SERIES
-30-
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