Why “Good-Enough” Middle Performers Are Blocking Your AI ROI 

Recently, I was with a customer talking about the future of supply chain talent when a leader said something that’s stuck with me. Their supply chain bench is, on average, 20-plus years into their careers. The rapidly evolving skills required to work in the agentic age (think: vibe coding) aren’t even on their radar… and they have only one Translator in the plant. If they lose him, they’re exposed.

I’ve heard variations of this across the community, the common bottom line being: we can’t find the talent. But forging a path for that talent is within the leadership team’s control. So, what’s stopping us? Capability – which follows culture and mindset. To transition the masses of the current workforce, and attract and retain emerging talent, we must reward a mindset of reinvention and eradicate a mindset of “good enough” or “this is the way it’s always been.” Only then can we move past fear and into capability building.

Less Execution and More Vision for COOs

In our latest COO research, we asked how COOs spend their time today versus how they’d like to spend it. Execution and performance management stayed near the top, but COOs want it to shrink significantly, from 27% to 18% of their time. Many expect AI and agentic systems to automate analytics, reporting, and workflow management, freeing up big chunks of time.

Where would that time go? Inspiration and vision (23% of total ideal time budget) is the aspiration. But here’s the catch: a more inspirational, vision-led operating cadence can’t happen if your culture rewards mediocrity and your operating model blocks the next generation of builders.

The Gray Zone: Where Performance Dies

Most organizations are decisive at the extremes: they fight hard to hire the best and let go of the clearly worst. But the wide middle is where hesitation lives – the “gray zone.”

The “gray zone” blocks hungry, growth-minded talent from advancing, creating a bottleneck at the top. Low curiosity becomes the norm as “this is how we’ve always done it” becomes an acceptable answer. A tacit resistance to change develops, especially when automation threatens headcount. And slowly, your rate of learning collapses, right when the environment demands speed. In other words, the hidden cost here is enormous.

AI amplifies all this. The people who love to innovate will be superpowered. The people who prefer to show up and go through the motions will find those motions automated away.

Agentic workflows will widen the gap even further because they turn insight into action faster than any human systems. In that world, average performance doesn’t stay average. It becomes a liability.

Translators Win

The leader’s comment at the off-site about losing their one Translator highlights a critical gap: organizations need people who can connect real operational context to digital capability – and do it at speed. But it’s not just about Translators. You need the right mix of digital personas.

Our recent analysis shows companies in the top quartile of digital maturity hire 2.1x more Wizards and 1.4x more Translators than their peers.

And this is where the old talent proxies start failing. Tenure, degrees, and functional expertise still matter, but they’re no longer sufficient. As we state in our latest report: “Proof of capability trumps all.”

This is a forcing function for COOs: redesign your system around proof of capability – hiring, progression, rotations, and opportunities to lead real change.

Practically, that means creating pathways where Translators and Citizens can emerge inside plants, DCs, and planning teams, not just in central offices. And that requires collapsing the gray zone.

Raise the Floor, Build the Flywheel

A few no-regret moves to drive that shift:

1. Make “great” observable. Define what good looks like in the agentic age: curiosity, adaptability, judgment, cross-functional orchestration – not just task completion.
2. Turn performance into a system, not an event. Reduce subjectivity. Don’t wait for annual review cycles to clarify what everyone already knows.
3. Build Translator pathways on purpose. Rotations, problem-solving sprints, and real ownership for growth-minded talent. Promotions should reflect proof, not patience.
4. Stop treating mediocrity as stability. In a step-change environment, “stable” can be another word for “stuck.”

COOs want more time for vision. AI and agents help create it. But making vision a reality depends on the right talent culture and pathways.