Briefing #29: The AI Metrics That Matter Most
Has your organization chosen the right AI metrics to measure success?
Note: This briefing was originally published on LinkedIn on February 20, 2026. It has been migrated to our new home on Substack to create a complete archive. Multi-format features like video and audio commentary are available for all new briefings published from April 2026 onwards.
Imagine driving a high-performance car. You’re obsessed with the dashboard. The tachometer is screaming at 8,000 RPM, the speedometer says you’re doing 120 miles per hour, and the engine temperature is perfect. By all these metrics, your vehicle is operating at peak performance.
But then you look up, and you realize you’ve been driving in a perfect circle for an hour. You haven’t actually gotten any closer to your destination.
This is the state of AI measurement in many enterprises today.
We’re building beautiful dashboards that glow with green vanity metrics. We celebrate when our new chatbot handles 10,000 “conversations” in its first month. We high-five when our sales team “adopts” the new AI-powered CRM feature. It turns out we’ve been measuring the engine’s RPM instead of our time to destination.
The implications of chasing poor metrics are profound. Poorly-conceived metrics allow us to invest millions of dollars and thousands of hours into initiatives that may make us “feel good,” albeit only for a moment, while delivering zero business value.
While it isn’t wrong for an organization to be proud of having achieved a 90%+ adoption rate of a new AI capability, it must always be assessed in the context of the P&L. Perhaps uptake has been swift, but did it actually move the needle? Perhaps the team did play with the tool – once, but hasn’t touched it since. Such an AI dashboard would be green while the P&L remains red.
The antidote is to shift our focus from activity to capability.
AI-native leaders don’t ask, “Is the AI busy?” They ask, “Is our business getting better because of the AI?”
This requires a new type of metric. Instead of measuring the tool, you must measure the business capability the tool is supposed to improve.
Don’t measure “chatbot queries handled.” Measure “customer retention rate” or “cost-to-serve.”
Don’t measure “AI tool adoption.” Measure “sales cycle time” or “lead conversion rate.”
These are Capability Metrics. They’re the only metrics your board, your CFO, and your shareholders actually care about. It’s the only way to know if you’re actually moving forward, or just driving in circles with the engine screaming.