January 8, 2026
"Gartner's predictions are always written in passive voice: decisions 'will be made,' buying 'will be' intermediated. But who is the subject of these sentences? And when 40% of projects fail, who takes the blame? Hint: it's not 'they.'"
January 8, 2026
In 2008, a Category Manager at the State of Georgia called me. His consulting engagement had just ended. His team was stuck in a 'what's next' holding pattern. No one was coming back. In 2025, I got a similar call. Different practitioner. Different decade. Same abandonment. The technology changed. The pattern didn't.
January 6, 2026
The tech stack asks: "What can we deploy?" The layer stack asks: "What can they absorb?" Only one survives Year 5.
January 5, 2026
Microsoft didn't lie with the name — they just set the wrong expectation. The gap between assist and partnership is where most AI strategy turns into implementation disappointment.
January 5, 2026
The industry thinks AI is either replacing us or serving us. They're missing the third option: flying with us.
January 4, 2026
You have better odds at a blackjack table than implementing procurement technology without a readiness assessment. At least the casino publishes the odds.
January 2, 2026
Technology waves change. The failure pattern doesn't. An 18-year retrospective of one thesis that was never disproved.
December 28, 2025
Ariba, Coupa, and SAP all tried to build procurement operating systems—and failed. The reason isn't that the concept was wrong. They built for lock-in instead of readiness. Here's what replaces them.
December 28, 2025
Five AI models read Hackett's latest paper. All five found the same buried lede: 18 years of data prove technology doesn't close the performance gap. Organizational readiness does. But that headline doesn't sell consulting engagements.
The Dog Whistle Problem: Why Boards Can’t Hear the Crash Coming
January 9, 2026
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Gartner predicts what might happen. Phase 0 reveals what's already happening. The crash isn't in the future — initiative failure is happening now.