5-minute read · For VP+ readers
RADAR. Five signals every AI transformation must transmit.
Reimagination · Agentification · Data and Context · Absorption · Rails. Miss one and the outcome is predictable. The reverse-lookup names what's broken in language a leader recognizes inside a minute.
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Five signals · Three states
When healthy · When missing · 60-second leader test
Read across each card for one signal's full picture. The test is what a VP can run in sixty seconds against their own program, without the diagnostic.
R
Reimagination
When healthy
Workflows are redesigned around AI capability before AI is deployed inside them. The org is willing to retire its own processes.
When missing
Faster Horses
AI accelerating workflows that should have been retired. The org gets faster cowpaths and calls it transformation.
60-second test
Map the top 20 workflows by labor hours. Mark each: redesign, retire, or augment. If more than 70% are 'augment', the program is layering, not transforming.
A
Agentification
When healthy
Agents own end-to-end outcomes (a quota, an SLA, a measurable lag indicator), not just a step in a human workflow. Their owner is named.
When missing
PowerPoint AI
Strategy decks proliferate; production agents don't. Activity is measured (pilots launched, models trained); outcome (work an agent owns end-to-end) isn't.
60-second test
Count agents in production with a named owner and a quarterly outcome target. If the count is zero, you're at PowerPoint AI regardless of slide volume.
D
Data & Context
When healthy
Agents are grounded in the company's specific data, decisions, customers, and history. The output looks like it could only have come from this company.
When missing
Hallucination
Generic outputs indistinguishable from competitors using the same models. The moat is the model's, not yours; switching costs are zero.
60-second test
Read three live agent outputs side-by-side with the same prompt run on a vanilla model. If a customer can't tell which is yours, your context layer isn't loaded.
A
Absorption
When healthy
Working pilots compound. The third team adopts faster than the first; the tenth, faster than the third. Adoption time is a tracked metric.
When missing
Organ Rejection
A working pilot in one team that the rest of the org won't adopt. Each new team starts from zero. AI transformations don't average; they multiply, or they don't.
60-second test
Pick a pilot that worked 6+ months ago. Count how many other teams now run it. If the answer is < 3, the absorber is rejecting, not absorbing.
R
Rails
When healthy
Governance, evals, and kill-switches are designed in from week one, not bolted on at the gate. Leaders sign off because the rails are visible, not because they were briefed.
When missing
Pilot Purgatory
Endless POCs that never graduate because leadership won't sign off without governance, and governance is treated as a Phase 2 problem. The single largest hidden cost in enterprise AI.
60-second test
For every active pilot, list its production gate (what evidence ships it). If 'Phase 2 governance review' appears more than once, you've named the bottleneck.
Run the diagnostic
Five minutes. Twenty-five questions. A score, an archetype, and the named pathology you're closest to.