Key findings
The takeaway? Most organisations don't have an AI technology problem. They have an AI capability problem.
And until leaders understand the capability of their people, it's difficult to accurately assess the value of any AI investment.
New tools are launching daily. Vendors are promising productivity gains. Boards are asking questions. Leaders are feeling pressure to act.
Yet the first wave of our AI Impact Reports tells a very different story.
Across the first 10 organisations we assessed, 93.25% of computer-based employees remain in the earliest stages of AI adoption.
These are people who are either unengaged, exploring possibilities, or only beginning to experiment with AI in their work.
Even more interesting, only two individuals had progressed to what we classify as Craftsperson capability – people who can confidently apply AI to solve business problems, improve workflows and create measurable value.
This highlights a growing disconnect.
Many organisations are talking about AI. Far fewer are building the capability required to generate meaningful outcomes from it.
One of the most common questions I hear from business leaders is:
“How do we know if our AI investments are (or will) actually working?”
The challenge, and truth, is that many organisations have no baseline. What I’m seeing is business leaders know which tools they’re using and sometimes how many people have some level of training. But, what they often don’t know is:
Without answers to those questions, AI investment decisions become educated guesses or worse, don’t happen at all…
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
One of the most important lessons emerging from these assessments is that access to AI tools does not equal capability. Most employees already have access to some form of AI.
What they often lack is:
This is where many organisations get stuck.
They focus on selecting tools before understanding the capability of the people expected to use them.
I believe the organisations seeing the greatest success are approaching AI differently.
They’re treating AI as a capability-building challenge rather than a technology deployment project.
The findings from our early AI Impact Reports reinforce a simple principle.
Before investing further in AI, leaders should understand where their people are today; that’s one of the reasons we developed the AI Impact Report.
Using our 10 Levels of AI Mastery framework, the report helps organisations establish a clear picture of current capability, identify gaps and quantify potential business impact.
The goal isn’t to generate another AI score. It’s to provide leaders with evidence.
I think the businesses that gain the greatest advantage from AI over the next few years won‘t be those with the most tools. They‘ll be the organisations that understand how their people are using best.
Our first 10 AI Impact Reports suggest there is a substantial capability gap across many organisations. They also suggest the opportunity is far larger than most leaders realise and this includes the guidelines and governance of how it’s used.
The question isn’t whether AI will impact your business. The question is whether you know how prepared your people are to take advantage of it.
Because if you don’t know your current AI capability, it’s difficult to know what opportunity you’re leaving on the table.
Our AI Impact Report provides a practical assessment of where your people are today, where capability gaps exist, and the potential commercial value of closing them.
Learn more about the AI Impact Report and discover what AI capability could mean for your organisation.
One finding stood out immediately. Based on our conservative modelling of time savings and labour costs, the estimated annual value of progressing an employee from basic AI Literacy toward Craftsperson capability is approximately $5,700 per year. Check out the ROI Calculator.
This isn’t based on ambitious claims of employees becoming “10x more productive”. It’s based on something much simpler.
Small, repeatable productivity gains accumulated across everyday work – Writing emails faster > Summarising documents more efficiently > Preparing reports in less time > Researching and analysing information more effectively > Creating first drafts rather than starting from a blank page.
Individually, these gains might seem modest. Collectively, across an organisation, they become significant.
For leaders looking to improve productivity without increasing headcount, capability development represents one of the most accessible opportunities available today.
The average organisation assessed had approximately 11.75 (let’s just call it 12) computer-based employees.
Based on current capability levels, the average productivity opportunity identified was equivalent to 1.9 FTE.
Think about that for a moment…
Yet many may already have the equivalent of nearly 2 additional full-time employees worth of productive capacity hidden within their existing workforce.
Not because people need to work harder. Not because processes need to be redesigned.
But because capability has not yet caught up with technology.
The opportunity isn’t necessarily to replace people with AI. It’s to enable people to perform higher-value work by reducing the time spent on repetitive, administrative and low-value tasks.
AI capability refers to an individual’s ability to effectively use AI tools to improve productivity, decision-making and business outcomes.
AI capability can be measured through structured assessments that evaluate adoption, proficiency, application and business impact across different levels of maturity.
The business value of AI training comes from productivity improvements, reduced administrative workload, improved decision-making and better utilisation of AI technologies.
Many businesses focus on implementing AI tools without first developing the capability of the people expected to use them.
Organisations can assess AI readiness by measuring workforce capability, identifying skill gaps and understanding the potential commercial impact of capability development.
