{"id":834,"date":"2026-06-06T06:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T06:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=834"},"modified":"2026-06-06T06:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T06:12:06","slug":"ai-productivity-gains-are-real-but-so-is-bad-management-leaders-are-really-struggling-to-articulate-what-the-vision-and-strategy-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=834","title":{"rendered":"AI productivity gains are real but so is bad management: \u2018Leaders are really struggling to articulate what the vision and strategy is\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New data from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) not only confirms a similar phenomenon is happening in the workplace, but sheds light on why, providing a potential jump-start for businesses experiencing this productivity paradox. BCG\u2019s 2026 Global AI at Work report, surveying nearly 12,000 frontline employees, found 42% of respondents reported eight hours of saved time, the equivalent of one workday a week, as a result of regular AI use, but 66% said they received limited to no guidance on what to do with the time they saved. Half said they\u2019re not using that saved time for more strategic work.<\/p>\n

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According to David Martin, Global leader of BCG\u2019s People & Organization practice, the productivity paradox, at least at the workplace level, comes down to a very human failure: leaders are not communicating clearly just why and how AI should be used in the office.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSenior leaders are really struggling to articulate what the vision and strategy is on AI,\u201d Martin told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cConsequently, it increases employee fear. It makes it harder for them to even understand what objectives they\u2019re pushing for, and it trickles through to adoption, usage, and the like.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s ability to make good on tech leaders\u2019 lofty promises of productivity gains has come under fresh scrutiny as workplace adoption has continued to rise. For one, the technology has proven itself to be more expensive than human labor, in part a result of the enormous costs to run AI models, as well as token-based pricing models hiking up companies\u2019 computing fees in a way that far outpaces improved output. Microsoft reportedly canceled much of its direct Claude code licenses, and Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding tools budget in the first four months of the year. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said as much earlier this week, telling Bloomberg that Anthropic is simply too expensive and the company is seeking alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,\u201d Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, recently told Axios.<\/p>\n

These surges in token usage driving up companies\u2019 costs have come as companies push employees to find AI productivity gains. The Financial Times<\/em> reported last month that Amazon employees were \u201ctokenmaxxing,\u201d in order to meet the company\u2019s AI metrics. Other tech companies have employed similar techniques, including Meta, which set up an AI user leaderboard.<\/p>\n

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Gil Luria, head of technology research at brokerage D.A. Davidson, previously told Fortune<\/em> the strategy is effective for increasing token usage, but little else.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound very healthy,\u201d Luria said. \u201cYou get the behavior that you create the incentive for. So if you tell people they\u2019ll succeed if they use a resource more, of course they\u2019ll use it more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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To BCG\u2019s Martin, the lack of company instruction around AI beyond calls to use it and use it often is why the technology\u2019s potential benefits have laid fallow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis whole tokenmaxxing thing is has probably run its course, and now it\u2019s hitting their cost base in a pretty big way,\u201d he said, echoing reporting by Fortune<\/em>\u2018s Jeremy Kahn. \u201cA lot of companies just gave AI to everyone, regardless of position, and I think now they\u2019ll say, \u2018Well, let\u2019s be more thoughtful about who has access, and what is the business case? And are we delivering on it, ultimately? Then holding people accountable to meeting their targets, just like they would anything non-AI that they\u2019ve been doing for the past 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Indeed, the same tech companies enabling tokenmaxxing are now ending incentives around AI use. Last week, Amazon scrapped its internal tracking of AI use after employees deployed AI bots to compete useless tasks, according to the Financial Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease don\u2019t use AI just for the sake of using AI,\u201d Dave Treadwell, an Amazon senior vice-president, reportedly told staff.<\/p>\n

At the Fortune COO Summit this week, Okta COO and President Eric Kelleher said he sees an enormous failure of imagination around AI adoption. \u201cEveryone has the mandate [to adopt AI],\u201d he said, but people are asking the wrong questions instead. \u201cWe have trained every manager in the world to think about one thing and that is, what\u2019s their headcount? What\u2019s the org chart look like? Who reports to who? How many layers do we have?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another summit attendee, Rakuten International COO Adrienne Down Coulson, wrote in a Fortune<\/em> commentary this week that C-suites pushing for additional AI use are far behind their \u201csuperhuman\u201d workers. \u201cHere\u2019s the uncomfortable truth,\u201d she wrote: \u201cAI can\u2019t fix a broken C-suite running on an antiquated operating system.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Martin said companies thinking about how to integrate AI into their entire enterprise operating model have seen success in increasing AI adoption and leveraging the technology to increase productivity, but another element of success with use of workplace AI comes from assuaging fears around the technology. Recent BCG research found that when workplaces treated AI agents like digital employees as opposed to tools, it increased employee fears around being displaced. This fear inhibits workplace sharing and encourages secret AI use, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a world where people are fearful, they are actually saying, \u2018Okay, how can I get a leg up on my peers, so that I can position myself to be highly valuable?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd because of that, they\u2019re a little bit reluctant to talk to their peers about what they\u2019re doing, and that has huge implications on the organization\u2019s ability to move more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

One balm in easing AI fears has been introducing comprehensive upskilling training to workers, Martin said. Workers who feel more empowered are more likely to share resources with others, making a company more nimble.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cA sharing culture is incredibly important,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not natural for fearful employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Researchers have found an explanation behind AI\u2019s productivity paradox and concluded tokenmaxxing was just making it worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productivity"],"yoast_head":"\nAI productivity gains are real but so is bad management: \u2018Leaders are really struggling to articulate what the vision and strategy is\u2019 - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=834\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AI productivity gains are real but so is bad management: \u2018Leaders are really struggling to articulate what the vision and strategy is\u2019 - 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