Reports & Briefs

Research Brief · September 2026

The Value of People First

AI tools are more capable and more available than ever. The research is consistent about what decides whether they pay off: the people who have to trust them, learn them, and change how they work.

Avolis Research Group3 min read10 sources
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01 · Where the effort belongs

70% of the work is people, process, and change.

According to BCG's long-standing 10-20-70 rule, 70% of the effort in a successful AI transformation goes to people, processes, and organizational change. The technology, data, and algorithms together make up the remaining 30% [1].

The 10-20-70 rule

Where the effort in a successful AI transformation goes

Algorithms
10%
Technology & data
20%
People, process & change
70%

02 · The value gap is real

Most AI spend still returns nothing measurable.

95%of organizations saw no measurable P&L impact from generative AI, despite $30 to 40 billion in enterprise spend.MIT NANDA, 2025 [2]
6%of companies qualify as "AI leaders" getting real, measurable value. Those leaders outperform peers by 9 points in shareholder returns.BCG, July 2026 [1]
40%+of agentic AI projects are predicted to be canceled by the end of 2027 due to cost, unclear value, or weak risk controls.Gartner, 2025 [3]

03 · Your people are ready

The support hasn't caught up.

90%+of workers already use personal AI tools for work. Only 40% of companies have bought an official subscription.MIT NANDA, 2025 [2]
3×more employees use gen AI for 30% or more of their daily work than leaders estimate (13% actual vs. 4% estimated).McKinsey, 2025 [4]
36%of employees feel adequately trained to use AI. Just 25% of frontline workers say leaders give enough guidance.BCG AI at Work, 2025 [5]
29%of employees admit to sabotaging their company's AI strategy (44% of Gen Z). About 3 in 10 of them cite fear of losing their job.WRITER, 2026 [6]

04 · What people-first returns

Every step toward supporting people pays.

Projects that meet or exceed their objectives

Excellent change management
88%
Poor change management
13%
Prosci [7]

Employee engagement among AI users

Manager coaches AI use
48%
No manager support
30%
Gallup, July 2026 [8]

Share of employees with AI-related skills

AI leaders
13%
AI laggards
1%
BCG, July 2026 [1]

Even fair change management delivers roughly 3× better odds of meeting objectives than poor change management [7]. Every step toward supporting people pays.

05 · Even the leaders keep humans in the loop

The strongest AI companies still staff for judgment.

Harvey180 legal engineers, one to two in every deploymentLegal AI company Harvey, valued at $15.6B, employs 180 legal engineers, all former practicing lawyers, and places one to two in every customer deployment [9].
KlarnaReplaced 700 agents with AI, then resumed hiring humansKlarna replaced 700 agents' worth of support with AI in 2024, then resumed hiring humans in 2025, with its CEO citing "lower quality" service [10].

06 · Five people-first moves

Where to put the effort.

  1. 01Train by role, with coaching.Five or more hours, in person, makes regular use far more likely [5].
  2. 02Equip managers to coach AI use.It is the strongest link to engagement Gallup found [8].
  3. 03Plan change management from day one.Budget for it alongside the software [7].
  4. 04Name an owner for every AI workflow.Accountability builds trust.
  5. 05Capture corrections as shared skills and rules.Your people's expertise becomes company knowledge.

The technology is ready. Your people decide whether it pays.

Sources

  1. 1BCG, "AI Talk Is Cheap. Value Creation Is Rare." (Jul 2026).
  2. 2MIT NANDA, "The GenAI Divide" (Aug 2025).
  3. 3Gartner press release (Jun 25, 2025).
  4. 4McKinsey, "Superagency in the Workplace" (Mar 2025; 3,002 employees, 118 C-suite).
  5. 5BCG, "AI at Work 2025: Momentum Builds, but Gaps Remain" (Jun 2025).
  6. 6WRITER enterprise AI survey (Apr 2026; 2,400 respondents; self-reported).
  7. 7Prosci, Best Practices in Change Management (2,600+ practitioners).
  8. 8Gallup, reported by Allwork.Space (Jul 2026).
  9. 9Bloomberg (Sep 9, 2026); SaaStr (Sep 13, 2026).
  10. 10Entrepreneur (May 2025).
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The Avolis Research GroupAvolis's in-house research practice, focused on how operations-heavy small and mid-sized businesses actually adopt AI. It synthesizes primary economic research, government survey data, and results from real implementations into practical, vendor-neutral guidance.
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