The uncomfortable truth: IT does not run on evidence − it runs on theatre. Unless we kill the rituals, no amount of AI, dashboards, or governance forums will change that.
For CIOs, CEOs and boards: the rituals choking your calendar aren’t control; they’re camouflage for indecision.
IT theatre isn’t uniquely an IT problem; it’s corporate muscle memory. The more we present, the more we appear in control. Board packs grow thicker, dashboards get more colourful, and yet a simple question still lands like a grenade: “What improved in the last 90 days?”
AI doesn’t fix this. It amplifies whatever operating system you already have. If the system rewards packaging, AI will help you package faster. If it rewards evidence, AI will help you produce and inspect evidence faster. The theatre persists because smart people have perfected three myths that confuse activity with value.
Three myths keep the theatre alive:
Myth one: “More slides mean more control.” Big packs create noise and reward packaging, not execution.
Myth two: “RAG status keeps everyone honest.” Red/amber/green tables are negotiated fiction − everything turns green before the board meeting, then bleeds red when the deadline slips.
Myth three: “Calling everything a priority shows ambition.” Declaring 10 priorities guarantees overload, shallow progress and value leaking offstage.
Judge every initiative by three lenses: value, cost and governance. My aim is to make value unavoidable, cost visible and IT governable. If you cannot show what value is delivered, how costs have changed, and that governance is enforced, you have theatre − not a plan.
Being wrong is acceptable; being vague is not.
I value experimentation − it fuels progress. But experiments alone aren’t value. Only outcomes count. Every test must prove its worth, or it’s just theatre. To make this shift from theatre to evidence, three conditions must be true first.
Three conditions must hold; otherwise, evidence loses to myth:
1) Named outcomes and capital discipline: The CEO, CIO and CFO agree on one page the few outcomes that matter in the next 90 days and park the rest. My rule: one lag outcome the board will recognise, and three lead measures we can move weekly.
2) Honest bets and visible assumptions: Every major decision is a bet. We write down the assumption, the owner, the evidence-by date, and what we’ll do if the evidence proves us wrong. Being wrong is acceptable; being vague is not.
3) A single working spine: There is one place − not seven − where commitments live. If truth is scattered across spreadsheets, e-mails and side-channels, the status ritual wins every time.
Once these preconditions are in place, the question becomes: how do you turn them into a repeatable way of running a modern IT spine?
The five-move pattern for cutting the theatre
With those conditions in place, I use a simple A–E sequence with executive teams:
A: Aim (scorecard the outcome)
Name what must move and how you will know. If you can’t name the value unit and evidence-by date, it’s theatre. ‘Improve customer experience’ is theatre; ‘Reduce complaint resolution time by 20% by 31 March, proven by cycle-time data’ is not.
B: Build (design the 90-day plan)
Turn the scorecard into a month 1/2/3 plan with owners, checkpoints and proof dates. Build it through value (value unit + lead measures), cost (unit cost per transaction/customer/case), and governance (decision gates + DAL closures). Miss any lens, and theatre wins.
C: Construct (build the evidence and the ledger)
Draft the three artefacts and keep them living tools, not new slides:
- Executive scorecard (lag + lead measures with thresholds)
- 90-day plan (month 1/2/3 commitments)
- Decision and assumption ledger (DAL): decisions, assumptions, owners, evidence-by dates
Then insist on a minimum proof pack: three to five named artefacts a board member can inspect − logs, registers, reconciliations, test results, adoption traces. “We’ll have evidence later” is theatre.
D: Decide (close bets with cadence)
Run weekly check-ins using only the artefacts. Week three: evidence review. Week four: decision gate − SCALE, FIX, or STOP − recorded in the DAL. If decisions are not recorded with triggers, it’s theatre.
E: Embed (make it the way you run)
Retire old rituals, sharpen the artefacts, and extend the rhythm beyond one pilot. Embedding is refusing to drift back to “updates”.
This five-move pattern defines the “what”; to make it real, it needs a timebox.
Running on a 90-day rhythm
Embedding is really cadence: the pattern only works with a drumbeat:
Month one: Baseline and alignment – finalise the artefacts and enter the decisions and assumptions into the DAL.
Month two: Execution and learning – complete the work and update the scorecard with actual results. In week three, review the evidence; in week four, decide whether to scale, fix, or stop.
Month three: Decide − often the step most organisations miss. For each major bet, review the evidence and choose: scale, redesign, or kill − then either close the DAL entry or roll it forward with a new evidence requirement and decision date.
The artefacts are the anchor: the scorecard states what must move, the 90-day plan commits who will move it, and the DAL records the bets − and forces decisions when the evidence arrives. Together, they turn IT from a status ritual into an evidence-producing system.
Closing provocation: The evidence test
If IT still lives in decks, you’re optimising for theatre, not truth. In the age of AI, the most radical move you can make is not buying another tool or launching an innovation lab on the third floor. It is insisting that every critical bet fits into a 90-day cycle and three artefacts you can read in 10 minutes.
So, three questions for your next board meeting:
- What part of our theatre will we kill in the next 90 days?
- Where is it written which decisions we’re betting our reputation on, and when will we review the evidence?
- If a board member walked in tomorrow, could we show, on one page, exactly what improved in value, cost, or governance last quarter − or would we reach for another deck?
Most organisations won’t pass the test, because admitting you run on theatre means challenging the habits and the hierarchies that once delivered success. As long as the status ritual feels safer than the scorecard, you stay trapped.
Winners in the AI era will be those who can face and switch off their own theatre.
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