All AI, Zero ROI: Leaders' Breakfast Roundtable

​Title: All AI, Zero ROI

​Description:

​You've invested in the tools. You've rolled out the licences. You've run the pilots. So why isn't anything fundamentally changing?

​Because AI adoption without architecture is just expensive activity.

​Most organizations are measuring logins, not impact. Automating dysfunction instead of redesigning work. And asking people to reimagine how they work while they're wondering if they're training their own replacement.

​Join us for a breakfast conversation with senior leaders navigating the same gap between AI investment and AI value. We'll walk through the five domains where AI adoption lives or dies — Strategy, Operations, Culture, Governance, and Enablement — and you'll leave with a sharper vocabulary for the work underneath the tools, plus a room full of peers wrestling with the same decisions.

​This is the New York launch of Splendid Torch, a collective building AI Adoption Architecture for principled leaders navigating an unstable world.

​Hosts:

​Bob Gower — Founder of Splendid Torch. Has spent two decades helping organizations like John Deere, Ford, and GE redesign how they work — now focused on building AI adoption architecture that starts with people, not tools.

​Joe O'Connor — Led the world's largest shorter workweek pilots and now helps redesign how work gets done in the age of AI. Author of Do More in Four (HBR Press). Strategic advisor on human-centered AI adoption.

​Usha Gubbala — 15 years coaching 500+ senior leaders at companies like Intel, PepsiCo, and Ford Foundation — now focused on helping leadership teams design the human conditions AI adoption depends on.

​Details:

​Tuesday, May 19 · 8:30–10:00 AM Fabrik Tribeca, 12-16 Vestry St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10013 Breakfast and coffee from 8:30. Programming begins at 9:00. ~25 seats.