Key takeaways
- The future project management office is a Value Realization Office. Leaders who focus on business outcomes in transformation efforts will close the value gap.
- Sustaining value is a constant effort. AI-powered platforms can help ensure accountability and maximize ROI despite continuous change.
- A Value Realization Office fuels an adaptive culture. A centralized hub can shepherd the organizational change required to fully benefit from technology investment.
One resolution is rising to the top of C-suite priorities in 2026: achieving returns on AI investment.
While more companies have closed the AI value gap in the last year, with 54% of organizations surveyed in the Kyndryl Readiness Report now reporting positive ROI, nearly half are still struggling. Their slow progress is being met by growing urgency: some 61% of leaders say they’re under more pressure now to prove ROI on AI than they were a year ago.
It’s a squeeze taking place even as enterprises continue to commit millions of dollars to AI initiatives, with average investment increasing 33% in the last year alone, according to Readiness Report data. A Stanford report found that global corporate spending on AI hit $252 billion in 2024 — a 26% increase from the prior year — as companies doubled down on AI initiatives.
But with mounting short-term pressure to justify AI investment comes the risk of moving too fast without an endgame in mind.
Today’s leaders are right to be wary of the potential repercussions of moving too fast, having seen the value gap emerge in earlier digital transformation efforts driven more by hype than long-term strategy. Their fears are also consistently backed up by survey data. Years of McKinsey research found that the average transformation success rate hovers around 30%, while a more recent Gartner survey found only modest improvement at 48%.
In 2026, organizations that succeed will be those that swap activity for accountability.
Proactive organizations looking to close the AI value gap will need to bridge this disconnect between investment, strategy and business outcomes. To do so, they’ll need to transform how they think about transformation itself.
This shift is already underway through Value Realization Offices, which tie investment to strategy and force a simple reckoning: did the business case pay off?
As AI initiatives proliferate across federated enterprises, these offices coordinate dependencies, identify risks, keep costs in check and cut through the illusion of success defined by activity alone. Serving as air-traffic controllers of transformation, their importance will only grow as agentic AI forces a level of organizational and workforce change most leaders are not yet prepared to manage.
As they consider how to achieve ROI in the year ahead, organizations with a Value Realization Office will gain a considerable advantage. The path to closing the value gap includes:
Supported by AI capabilities, a mature Value Realization Office helps leaders answer two critical questions in determining which projects to pursue: One, how long will it take to realize value? And two, how hard will it be to reach that end point?
The office can also encourage organizations to rethink which metrics matter when evaluating success. A Value Realization Office prompts leaders to look beyond dashboards and consider what actually changed. Transformation isn’t measured by logins to an AI platform, for instance, but by whether people use that platform effectively — and whether that translates into productivity gains.
While these outcomes are harder to measure, the office helps organizations define success in line with strategic priorities and evaluate results against the resources invested.
The Value Realization Office also imposes discipline through effective governance and accountability.
By establishing strong governance, the office determines the best path forward as projects progress and applies lessons learned to future efforts. This includes identifying risks early to inform decision-making, continuously monitoring how projects are sustaining value over time and stepping in to shut down zombie projects that plod along and drain costs without delivering results.
These offices help organizations overcome decision dilemmas, a common challenge that results from a lack of structure that aligns decision-making with ROI. The office can guide organizations in creating a framework that closes the gap between investment and value, not only during major transformation projects but also in steady-state operations.
With a bird’s-eye view of transformation projects across an organization, a Value Realization Office can use its vantage point to work more holistically with the CHRO and talent team.
Building a future-ready workforce requires modernizing the HR technology portfolio and talent processes. This allows flexible approaches to skilling, staffing, and career pathing, especially as agentic AI transforms the workplace — from job roles and responsibilities to entire organizational structures.
By partnering with HR to align reskilling efforts with business needs, the Value Realization Office builds future-ready teams that learn faster than the market changes, enabling organizations to achieve and sustain benefits.
Today, the greatest hurdles to ROI are often challenges involving people and processes. Many technology projects fail because they neglect the employee experience or proceed without a plan to bring the workforce along on the journey. This is particularly true of AI projects, which can introduce anxiety when misconceptions aren’t demystified.
Effective change management is the gas pedal to the value realization engine. A Value Realization Office eases the transition into new tools and ways of working. The office can also reinforce a culture that moves fast and takes ownership, supported by leaders who are direct about what’s changing and why, as well as skills investment that helps ensure teams are prepared to use new systems as they’re deployed.
The race to deliver returns on AI is accelerating, but value will disappear just as fast without the right approach to transformation. In 2026, organizations that succeed will be those that swap activity for accountability. A Value Realization Office can help them anchor investment in long-term outcomes — and gain a lasting competitive advantage.
