Manager turnover costs far more than the recruiter’s invoice

What to measure beyond logins

Most organizations still measure artificial intelligence (AI) adoption by time spent in a platform, Tamanini said. That rewards activity, and Amazon workers gaming an internal AI leaderboard showed the result. “If you just want to use logins, then just get a dashboard. You don’t need anything else,” he said. “But how do you tie that then to time to proficiency within the team?”

He points to outcome data instead: time to proficiency, faster deliverables, shorter service-level agreements (SLAs), customer sentiment and fewer internal handoffs. He does not endorse specific vendors. He tells managers to match tools to pain points, such as project management or customer engagement software, workflow automation such as Microsoft Power Automate, or a Copilot agent linked to team data sources.

Those tools matter most when restructuring widens a manager’s span of control without adding resources, including time. “You might not have time to meet with 15 direct reports every week, but do you have time to meet with 15 direct reports every other week?” Tamanini said. Managers handed more scope without a new way of working face a predictable result. “Ultimately what it’s going to do is lead to burnout unless people figure out a different way of operating,” he said.

Why people leave leaders

“One of the things that we know through research that has not changed over time is that people don’t tend to leave organizations, they tend to leave leaders,” Tamanini said. A poor promotion multiplies the replacement bill. “If you get a bad leader, you might lose that leader, but you’re also going to potentially lose a whole bunch of team members because they want to get away from that individual,” he said.

The push for speed makes it worse, he added: organizations cut the development time new leaders need when they judge it as not driving the business. “We got to make sure that we’re equipping people to be successful versus picking up the pieces when they’re not, after the fact,” Tamanini said.