When teams take our Co-Exponential diagnostic for the first time, the same four gaps show up again and again. They are not exotic problems. They are the everyday failure modes that most teams have learned to live with. Looking at the average results across first assessments tells a clear story about where the next wave of performance is hiding, and what leaders need to do to release it.
Only 4 in 10 Teams Sustain Real Candor
Honest, productive conversation that actually moves business outcomes is rarer than most leaders assume. Only about 40 percent of teams in our data manage to sustain it. The rest are running on a quieter version of the same dynamic: people raise concerns once, the response is muted, and they stop raising them again.
The miss matters because candor is upstream of almost everything else worth measuring. Without it, decisions are made on incomplete information, risks surface late, and feedback flows mostly upward in carefully curated form. The leaders who close this gap do not do it by demanding more honesty. They do it by making it visibly safe, and visibly useful, to be honest.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Stalls at Roughly Half
Strong cross-functional collaboration with shared ownership shows up in only about half of the teams we assess. The other half are operating in some flavor of silo, even when their org chart says otherwise. The work crosses boundaries, but accountability does not. When something goes wrong at the seam between functions, it tends to be nobody’s job to fix it.
The fix is rarely structural. It is behavioral. Teams that collaborate well co-create outcomes rather than handing them off. They name the seams in advance, define who owns what at each one, and treat the boundary as a place that requires deliberate design rather than goodwill.
Only 5 Percent of Teams Believe They Reach Their Full Potential
The most striking number in the data is also the most useful conversation starter. Only 5 percent of teams say they are achieving their full potential. That is not a rounding error. It is a near-universal admission that there is meaningful headroom that is currently going unused.
The number is uncomfortable because it cannot be blamed on the market, on resourcing, or on someone else’s decisions. It points squarely at how the team operates with the people, time, and tools it already has. For leaders, that is good news. It means the lever for the next step change in performance is mostly inside the room.
Only 1 in 3 Teams Use Agentic AI Effectively
Agentic AI is now a practical capability, not a future trend. Even so, only about a third of teams in our data say they are using it effectively. The remaining two-thirds are leaving significant value on the table, either by under-experimenting, by using AI in ways that automate noise rather than work, or by treating it as an individual productivity tool rather than a team capability.
The teams that lead on this are not the ones with the most tools. They are the ones who treat agentic AI as part of how the team operates, with shared practices, shared learning, and shared decisions about where it adds genuine leverage versus where it just adds activity.
How to Use These Four Numbers
These four data points are most valuable as a benchmarking starting point for your own team. Read together, they tell you where the next conversation should probably begin:
- If candor is low, start there. Almost nothing else improves while honest conversation is rationed.
- If collaboration is patchy, look at the seams between functions and at who actually owns the outcomes that cross them.
- If potential feels capped, treat that signal as an invitation, not an indictment.
- If agentic AI is underused, make it a team capability rather than a personal one.
Each gap is a lever. The teams that close even one of them tend to feel the difference quickly. The teams that close all four tend to redefine what good looks like for their organization.
What This Means for Leaders
Diagnostic data is only useful if it becomes a conversation. The point is not to score your team. It is to name what is true, decide which of the four gaps matters most for your context, and act on it before the next quarter absorbs your attention.
Are your teams genuinely maximizing growth, performance, and capability? If the honest answer is “not yet,” the four numbers above are a fast way to find the gap that will produce the most upside when you close it.
