The Problem Most Organizations Face

You’ve invested in new technology platforms. You’ve run pilots. You’ve trained people. And yet—adoption stalls, productivity gains don’t materialize, and the promised transformation never quite arrives.

This isn’t a technology failure. It’s an organizational design failure.

Most organizations approach AI adoption backward. They select a platform, implement it, then expect the organization to adapt. But technology changes in months while organizations change in years. When you sequence technology before organizational change, you’ve already lost.

Research backs this up: 71% of AI pilots fail to scale beyond initial experiments. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because the organization wasn’t designed to absorb it.

A Different Approach: Simultaneous Co-Design

Technology Organization Transformation addresses the human side of technological change. Instead of treating technology selection and organizational design as sequential steps, we co-design them simultaneously.

This means asking different questions from the start:

• What organizational structures will this technology require to succeed?
• What new roles and skills will our people need?
• How will decision-making processes need to change?
• What cultural shifts are necessary—and how do we enable them?
• What does success look like in 6 months, 12 months, 3 years?

By designing the organization and technology together, you create alignment that makes adoption natural rather than forced.

Engagement Model

I work primarily with team and office-level engagements—typically sub-150 people—over 3-6 month timelines. This scale allows for genuine transformation rather than superficial implementation, while keeping scope manageable enough to demonstrate measurable results.

Typical Engagement Phases

Phase 1: Diagnostic (4-6 weeks)

Understanding your current state across three dimensions: technical readiness, cultural preparedness, and process maturity. This diagnostic identifies not just what needs to change, but the sequence and pace of change your organization can actually absorb.

Phase 2: Design (6-8 weeks)

Co-designing the future state—technology architecture and organizational structure together. This includes role definitions, decision rights, communication flows, and the specific changes needed to enable adoption.

Phase 3: Implementation Support (8-12 weeks)

Supporting the actual change, including change management, skills development, and the organizational learning that ensures changes stick. This phase focuses on building internal capability so transformation continues after the engagement ends.

What This Achieves

Organizations that approach transformation this way see fundamentally different results:

• Higher adoption rates—because the organization was designed to use the technology, not just trained on it
• Faster time to value—because organizational blockers are addressed before they become expensive delays
• Sustainable change—because you’ve built internal capability, not just implemented external solutions
• Reduced change fatigue—because the change approach matches what your organization can actually absorb

In my own experience leading transformation at State Department, this approach helped us achieve a 28% increase in team engagement while restructuring operations across 170+ locations globally.

Organizations I Work With

Technology Organization Transformation works best for:

• Government agencies navigating AI adoption within compliance, security, and procurement constraints
• Enterprise organizations whose AI pilots aren’t scaling
• Regulated industries that need to move carefully but can’t afford to move slowly
• Mission-driven organizations that need to balance efficiency with their core purpose

The organizations I work with best are those that recognize they’re not just implementing new technology—they’re becoming a different kind of organization. That’s both the opportunity and the challenge.

Working Through Guidehouse

I lead Technology Organization Transformation work as a Director at Guidehouse. This provides access to broader consulting capabilities when engagements require them—technical implementation, change management at scale, or domain expertise across government and commercial sectors.

For initial conversations about how this approach might fit your situation, contact me directly.

Related Resources

• Transformation Frameworks — Diagnostic tools and models
• Writing — Essays on transformation, AI adoption, and organizational change
• At the Crossroads of Tradition and Innovation with AI — Foreign Service Journal article on transformation at State