She kept her voice even in meetings. Answered messages within the hour. Never canceled a one-on-one. By every visible measure she was functioning. But three of her seven direct reports had gone quiet in six weeks. The director came to me wondering what was wrong with her team. Nothing was wrong with her team.

He had made quarterly forecasts for eleven years. Then last October he started second-guessing every number. Rerunning analysis that looked right the first time. He told me he was losing his edge. He was not losing his edge. His nervous system had changed the operating conditions for his brain. And nobody had told him.

Ninety-five percent of AI initiatives fail to scale past the pilot stage. Most leaders redesign the rollout. They are solving for the wrong thing. The reason your adoption is stalling is not in your project plan. It is in the prefrontal cortex of every person who received your mandate without nervous system safety.