EY Just Put $100 Million Behind Something Most Companies Never Measure

TL;DR: EY is paying real money for judgment, adaptability, and collaboration. Most leadership teams have no idea what they would score on any of them. The score exists whether or not anyone looks at it.

Can you name your leadership team's score?

EY's U.S. business just announced a $100 million investment in employee rewards for things like judgment, adaptability, innovation, collaboration, and thoughtful use of AI. https://www.wsj.com/business/ernst-young-is-giving-100-million-in-bonuses-to-staff-for-human-skills-9320e93d?mod=article_inline

Individual employees can receive up to $500 on the spot. Individuals and teams can receive as much as $25,000 for making a material difference.

That's a remarkable amount of money to put behind behaviors that most companies don't measure at all.

And I think that's the more important story.

AI is making it much easier to produce work. It is not making it easier to decide what work is worth doing, whether the answer is good, or when to stop and reconsider.

EY is betting that judgment matters more, not less, when the machines get faster.

I think most leadership teams should ask themselves a simple question:

How do you know how good your team is at making decisions together?

Not whether everyone is smart.

Not whether you have good people.

Whether the team can think clearly when the stakes are high, the information is incomplete, and the CEO isn't in the room.

Here are five signs you may have a problem:

• The same decision comes back to the table for the third time.

• Your executives can give you the recommendation but can't explain the reasoning behind it.

• Decisions that used to get made two levels down now land in your inbox.

• The work is getting faster, but the rework is getting worse.

• The hardest question in the room only gets asked when you ask it.

None of those is an AI problem.

They are leadership-team problems.

And AI can make them harder to see.

A polished recommendation can now arrive in hours instead of days. That creates a dangerous possibility: the organization can get much faster at producing answers without getting better at judging them.

So how do you know if you have a problem?

Years ago, we ran an offsite for a founder and his executive team. We'd administered the Five Dysfunctions of a Team assessment beforehand, but we decided not to open the results until everyone was in the room.

Every measure came back red.

Nothing green. Nothing yellow.

The room went quiet.

Then the CEO told his team he was close to burnout. He hadn't said it before.

The assessment hadn't told them anything they didn't already know.

It gave them a number they could finally talk about.

That's what measurement can do when it is done well. It doesn't create the problem. It makes the problem visible.

And that's why I wouldn't wait for an obvious failure.

If your company is making significant investments in AI, the question isn't whether your people are ready for AI.

It's whether your leadership team is ready to make decisions at the speed AI is creating them.

EY has put $100 million behind that question.

You can put a number on yours.

That is what the 30-Day Diagnostic does. Thirty days. Your leadership team and your organization assessed. Overall score, five dimensions, item-level detail, six heat maps. Then half a day in a room arguing about what came back, and three commitments for the next ninety days.

Send us the one decision your team keeps reopening. That is usually where it starts.

michael.sullivan@sullivanpractice.com · sullivanpractice.com · linkedin.com/in/michael-sullivan-iii

Sullivan Practice helps tech executives turn strategic confusion into clear priorities, aligned decisions, and collective results. Leadership team offsites, CXO advisory, executive coaching. Seventy leadership teams. 135 executive offsites. 550,000+ employees in organizations served. 1,700+ leaders in the room. Clients include Netflix, Comcast, Intel, Dell, Adobe, Kaiser Permanente, Bayer, and FOX. Delray Beach, Florida, serving executive teams nationally. sullivanpractice.com

Michael Sullivan is CEO and founder of Sullivan Practice, advising Fortune 500 C-suites. Every engagement led and delivered personally. MA Counseling, MA Philosophy, MA Theology. Certified Working Genius facilitator and certified Myers-Briggs practitioner.