Internal transformation: a failure of design rather than an excess of tools

The beginning of each year is marked by the release of the latest edition of the Lecko study on internal organizational transformation, and this year is no exception. As was the case last year, given the wealth of information contained in the document, I will be writing a series of articles to cover it in depth, starting here with the organizational dimension.

The 2026 edition ([FR]State of the Art 2026) does not really describe a crisis of digital adoption but, in my opinion, a failure in the design of work. It points not to a technological deficit or resistance to change, but to a persistent inability of organizations to transform the tools deployed into operational performance.

The level of equipment is high, with 75% of digital work environments based on Microsoft 365. Outlook is used by 77% of private sector employees and 76% of public sector employees. Equipment and standardization have therefore been achieved, and at this stage, it no longer makes sense to talk about digital transformation as a tooling project.

However, 60% of users say they use personal tools to work more efficiently, a figure that does not reflect any mistrust but shows that business work environments do not allow them to work efficiently in real-world conditions.

In short:

• The Lecko 2026 study highlights a failure in work design rather than a problem with digital or technological adoption; the tools are there but are ineffective without organizational transformation.
• Despite a high level of digital equipment, a majority of employees use personal tools to be effective, revealing a flaw in the design of work environments.
• Organizational noise, particularly excessive meetings, reflects a poor design of collective work, where tools compensate for a lack of structural clarity.
• The gap between prescribed work and actual work fuels the phenomenon of “work about work,” amplified by digital technology, which takes up an increasing amount of working time without generating productivity gains.
• The expected effects of generative AI are not materializing, partly because executives, protected from the effects of organizational noise, are designing transformations based on a vision that is disconnected from actual work.

A flaw in organizational design

The data on organizational noise is unambiguous. Forty percent of employees believe that half of all meetings could be reduced or eliminated, and for managers, 40 to 80 percent of working time is taken up by meetings. These figures do not so much describe a problem of individual discipline as a structural inflation of coordination needs.

A well-designed organization is supposed to reduce the need for explicit coordination, while a poorly designed organization increases it. The organizational noise measured by Lecko is not an accidental byproduct of digital technology, but the measurable residue of poorly executed internal transformations where tools have been deployed without explicitly redefining the rules of collective work (Collaboration tools in the workplace: a real waste?).

Meetings, emails, chats, and notifications then play a compensatory role. They serve to compensate for the lack of clarity on priorities, responsibilities, and decision-making processes, and the more vague the work design, the more noise increases.

I was recently talking to someone who described their business as “mature” in that the multitude of communication and collaboration tools allowed people to communicate with ease whenever the need arose. As our discussion progressed, something became clear to me, and I came to the opposite bottom line: wasn’t the need to constantly communicate to ask for clarification, validation, or coordination, on the contrary, a sign of immaturity? Or, to put it another way, wasn’t technological maturity the corollary of organizational immaturity?

I’ll leave you to think about it…

Prescribed work, actual work, and the explosion of work about work

One of the major contributions of the study is to highlight the gap between prescribed workload and actual workload. Prescribed work, as described by processes and tools, is optimized, streamlined, and equipped, while actual work absorbs the residual complexity (The organizational complication: the #1 irritant of the employee experience).

The figures on hyperconnectivity are revealing and, unfortunately, are in line with last year’s study (Hyperconnectivity in the workplace: digital becomes a burden). 10% of employees are continuously hyperconnected and 75% are hyperconnected some weeks. Among executives, 40% work overtime every other day. This overtime is not seen as an anomaly, but as a necessary evil to emove things forward”.

This extra time is not devoted to the core business and is consumed by what can be described as work about work: coordination, follow-up, reminders, updates, and informal arbitration. In other words, it is work made necessary by the organization itself in order to make the “real” work possible, and other studies tell us that it can take up to 60% of the time (Work about work: when the reality of work consists of making things that don’t work work).

Digital technology has not eliminated this peripheral work. It has simply made it faster, more widespread, and more invasive, evenmore necessary and less efficient than before (Collaboration: a technological promise that is falling short (and it’s going to get worse)). Multitasking in meetings, fragmented attention, and compressed deep work time are concrete manifestations of this that we all experience.

Where has the value of internal transformation gone?

One question springs to mind when reading the figures: where are the productivity gains?

The study shows that the introduction of generative AI, particularly via Copilot, has had no measurable effect on work rates. The volume of exchanges is not decreasing, overflow work is not declining, and the promises of time savings remain theoretical. All current studies tell us this, and Lecko only confirms it (Adoption and impact of AI: lessons (and limitations) from the latest McKinsey and BCG studies).

Lecko distinguishes between three types of tasks: comfort, reinforcement, and substitution. Only substitution tasks actually free up time and they remain marginal in the uses observed. In practice, AI improves perceived quality or comfort, but does not reduce the organizational workload.

Internal transformation has therefore created technical value, but this value is neither captured by employees in the form of freed-up time, nor by the organization in the form of increased performance. It is absorbed by organizational complexity, designed coordination, and the structure itself (Are you aware of the technostructure that devours all your efforts to improve?).

Management structurally protected from the noise it produces

The study introduces the concept of managerial refraction. Executives and top managers have organizational “fast tracks”. Their subjects are given priority, the noise that reaches them is filtered, and their perception of the actual effort required at work is therefore mechanically biased.

This point is essential. It is not a question of questioning managerial intentions, but of noting a structural fact that means that those who steer internal transformation no longer directly experience its effects. They assess the workload and impact and design the transformation based on the prescribed work, not the actual work.

This is how the gap between strategic ambitions and operational capacity widens. The figures on overload, saturation, and fatigue are not ignored out of cynicism, but because they remain largely invisible to those who design the working environment.

Bottom line

The figures from the Lecko 2026 study do not tell the story of an incomplete digital transformation, but rather that of an avoided organizational transformation. As long as work design, the place of work about work, value capture, and managerial perception remain outside the scope of control, tools will continue to optimize noise rather than performance.

To answer your questions…

Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)

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How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated Why your Digital Workplace is hurting your organization’s performance Productive tensions or sterile tensions? A reading of the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2025 report How can you prepare your organization for AI? Workplace Collaboration: When Technology Saturates, Productivity Stagnates and Generations Disconnect Hyperconnectivity in the workplace: digital becomes a burden