Everyday Run State: Pro Edition

Cloudera’s new State of Enterprise AI report shows a bit of a paradox: 96% of leaders working in Enterprise-level organizations say AI is “somewhat integrated” into their business… but only 21% have it fully embedded in daily processes. In other words, almost everyone claims they’re “all in on AI,” but only a small fraction have made it past the pilot project or shiny demo stage.

Honestly, I’m not surprised. I see this all the time with my clients. Leaders say, “We’ve automated everything,” and then I go talk to a technician who still spends half their day copy-pasting ticket notes into three different places.

That disconnect between what leadership thinks is happening versus what’s really going on? It’s not new. It’s been happening long before AI.

Enter the Gemba Walk

In Lean manufacturing, the antidote to assumptions is a Gemba Walk: literally “go to the place” where the work is happening. Don’t just read the dashboard. Don’t just skim the report. Go see the work for yourself.

On a factory floor, that means standing at the line and watching materials move. In a service business, it means sitting with your techs, watching tickets flow (or not flow), and asking questions that uncover the bottlenecks leaders never see from behind a screen.

Because here’s the truth: your team already knows where the friction is.

They just assume you don’t want to hear it.

(Teach Me) How to Gemba

A Gemba Walk doesn’t have to be fancy. It just means getting closer to the work. Some ideas:

• Be a tech for a day: Sit with a technician and watch how they actually manage tickets. How many tabs are open? How often are they waiting for information?

• Shadow dispatch: Observe how priorities get set, and how often “urgent” magically appears out of thin air.

• Ride along on a site job: This might mean watching an installer wrestle with missing parts or last-minute scope changes. For MSPs, see how long it takes to get into a client’s network when credentials aren’t updated.

• Watch the AI tools in action: Do people trust them, or override them constantly? If your “automation” is creating double work, you’ll only see it by sitting there.

• Ask open-ended questions: Not “why didn’t this get done?” but “what slows you down the most?” or “what’s the workaround you wish you didn’t have to do?”

Do this without judgment. The goal isn’t to play “gotcha,” it’s to notice where the story you tell yourself doesn’t match the day-to-day reality.

Why It Matters

AI, automation, dashboards - all of it is great. I mean, I get paid to build reports and dashboards, so let’s not throw the whole business plan out the window here.
But without these reality checks, leaders risk building strategies on wishful thinking. That’s why so many AI pilots stall out: the assumptions were wrong.

A Gemba Walk is the low-tech, old-school practice that keeps the shiny new tools honest.