Pay No Attention to the ROI Behind the Curtain.

The lights are dim. In the sterile conference room, under the low hum of the servers, the show is about to begin. This isn’t Broadway. This is the “pilot theater,” the grand stage where innovation is performed, not delivered. We see the impressive demos, the slick dashboards, the confident talk of transformation. It’s a magnificent production. But pull back the curtain, and you’ll find him: a nervous man, bathed in the glow of a monitor, frantically pulling levers. He’s following a script, a framework, a process so perfectly executed that everyone has forgotten to ask if the city of Oz he’s projecting is even real.

The data, when you can find it in the dark, is grim. A staggering 95% of generative AI programs fail to deliver any real value. The stage is littered with the ghosts of failed pilots. We’ve become so obsessed with the performance of progress that we’ve forgotten the point of it. The man behind the curtain is a master of Agile ceremonies, his stand-ups are flawless, his retrospectives insightful. He can tell you, with perfect clarity, that the team followed the process beautifully. But when you ask him what they were supposed to be delivering, his eyes go blank. The script didn’t mention that part.

And now, a new script has arrived. It has a name, of course. They always do. This one is called SHAPE.

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The New Framework Stares Back

The SHAPE index was born from the wreckage of that 95%. It’s a framework meant to identify the five key behaviors of leaders who can actually escape the theater and build something real. It’s supposed to be our map out of Oz. But in a world that worships the map over the destination, we must ask: Is this a tool for the leader, or is the leader just becoming a better-trained tool for the framework? Is this a way out, or just a more elaborate set of levers to pull?

Let’s look at the five acts of this new play.

Act I: Strategic Agility

The script says a leader must plan for the long term while pivoting in the short term. In the theater, this is a beautiful piece of choreography. The leader stands at the whiteboard, decisively moving charts around, declaring a “pivot.” It looks like genius. It feels like action. But too often, it’s just rearranging the props on stage. The underlying set—the core business problem—remains unchanged. The applause is for the performance of agility, not the achievement of a better position.

Act II: Human Centricity

Here, the actor-leader must perform empathy. They must quell the rising anxiety of the workforce. The mantra, repeated with a fixed smile, is: “AI will make humans better.” It sounds reassuring, but the chill remains. The change is designed in closed rooms and rolled out from the top down. Psychological safety isn’t a culture; it’s a talking point in a town hall. The goal isn’t to build trust, but to manage dissent just enough to keep the show from being cancelled.

Act III: Applied Curiosity

This act requires the leader to separate signal from the deafening hype. So, the theater puts on a dazzling display of “disciplined experimentation.” New, shiny AI toys are paraded across the stage. Each pilot has a clear learning objective, a report is dutifully filed, and then… nothing. The learning isn’t applied; it’s archived. The point was never to learn; it was to be seen learning. The experiments are just another scene, designed to convince the audience that something, anything, is happening.

Act IV: Performance Drive

This is where the term “pilot theater” comes directly from the script. The curtain falls on the pilot, and the applause is thunderous. Success is declared. But when you ask what happens next, how it scales, how it delivers that fabled ROI, you’re met with silence. The cast is already rehearsing for the next pilot, the next opening night. Success is measured in the activity of the performance, not the revenue at the box office. The show is celebrated, but the business quietly bleeds.

Act V: Ethical Stewardship

The final, haunting act. This part of the script is often left on the floor, only picked up when a crisis erupts. A reporter calls. A dataset is found to be biased. Suddenly, the theater puts on a frantic, ad-libbed performance of responsibility. Governance is bolted on like a cheap prop. It’s an afterthought, a desperate attempt to manage the fallout after the curtain has been torn down and the audience sees the wizard for what he is: just a man, following a script that was fundamentally flawed from the start.

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Are We the Shapers, or Are We Being Shaped?

The good news, the researchers tell us, is that these five SHAPE capabilities can be taught. It’s a comforting thought. But in the eerie glow of the pilot theater, a darker question emerges: Are we teaching leaders to be effective, or are we just teaching them to be better actors?

We’ve been here before with Agile, with Six Sigma, with every framework that promised a revolution and instead delivered a new form of ritual. We perfect the process and forget the purpose. We fall in love with the intricate levers and the booming voice they produce, and we never step out from behind the curtain to see if anyone is even listening anymore.

The SHAPE index gives us a language to describe the leaders we need. But it also gives us a new, more sophisticated script to hide behind. And as we stand here, in the perpetual twilight of the pilot theater, the most important question isn’t whether our leaders have SHAPE. It’s whether we are the shapers, or if we are merely, and quietly, being shaped.