The Maverick Trap: When Siloed AI Projects Undermine Enterprise Strategy

Every organization has them — the innovators who move fast, build something clever, and get celebrated for being bold. Sometimes, that energy drives real progress. Other times, it quietly fragments the very strategy it was meant to accelerate.

At first, the maverick effort looks like a win: a department head spins up a quick AI pilot, a data team prototypes something new without waiting for IT. It feels agile, entrepreneurial, even heroic. But beneath that momentum lies a deeper problem — innovation that’s misaligned with intent.

Mavericks don’t appear because people are careless. They appear because leaders haven’t clearly aligned on purpose, ownership, or risk. Governance feels slow. IT seems distant. Urgency outpaces direction. In that vacuum, smart people do what smart people do — they build.

For a while, it works. Then reality starts to surface:

• Compliance gaps nobody saw coming.

• Tools that work locally but won’t scale.

• Budgets stretched by overlapping solutions.

• Leadership trust that erodes after one “pilot that never made it.”

The organization doesn’t lose its innovation — it loses its cohesion.

In one organization, leadership offered incentives for employees to propose new AI initiatives. The intent was positive — to encourage innovation and surface creative ideas. But instead of collaboration, it unleashed a wave of maverick behavior — individuals and teams developing proposals in isolation, each convinced their idea was the one that mattered most.

Some avoided input from stakeholders to protect “ownership.” Others pulled attention and resources from existing priorities to advance their concepts. The result wasn’t innovation — it was fragmentation. The Voice of the Stakeholder™ was heard too late, and the organization’s energy scattered instead of scaling.

Alignment is not a restraint on innovation — it’s the structure that makes innovation sustainable. When executives are truly aligned, AI initiatives get heard, vetted, and scaled instead of multiplying in silos. The conversation shifts from “Who owns this?” to “How do we make it work for the enterprise?”.

That’s what we build at First Stage Advisors. Through the Alignment Pulse Scorecard™, we reveal where leadership perspectives diverge before those gaps turn into cost or conflict. Through Voice of the Stakeholder™, we surface misalignment early — then create clarity around the initiative itself, ensuring leaders and stakeholders are aligned on what success truly requires. And through Reinforcement Checkpoints, we help sustain that alignment as priorities shift, so decisions stay connected to strategy rather than sliding back into silos. We keep alignment alive long after the kickoff meeting ends.

Because alignment isn’t bureaucracy — it’s what keeps innovation from unraveling.

AI doesn’t fail because leaders lack ideas. It fails because ideas emerge without shared purpose or accountability. The maverick trap is avoidable. Start with alignment — before the first step.

👉 Learn more at www.firststageadvisors.com

Innovation without alignment isn’t agility — it’s entropy.

The author, Rebecca Bonds, is the Founder of First Stage Advisors, helping healthcare executives achieve alignment before major strategy or AI initiatives.