BCG’s AI at Work study confirms what aibl’s research already found

I told you so. It’s petty I know, but it feels good when a monster like BCG reinforces a message from your own research.

Back in March, we talked about how the predictors of ROI were the “hard work” variables. Namely, strategic clarity, governance maturity, and cross-functional alignment.

This matches what we learned from BCG’s recent AI at Work Study.

Before we get to that though, it’s worth sharing a topline finding about the headline metric of AI, time saved. Over 40% of frontline workers save a day or more per week, which should be, at the least, a real boost to productivity and potentially to innovation.

Yet people won’t turn that time into gold without guidance. Two-thirds say that they get limited or no direction on how to redirect their time, and over half don’t direct it to what they consider “strategic” work.

But back to the meat of the matter. In the study, BCG breaks companies into two groups based on their approach. The tool-first respondent orgs are the “deploy” group, and they’re contrasted with a “reshape/invent” group, that has rebuilt workflows from end-to-end.

In measure after measure (value captured, proving impact, worker confidence) the latter group outperforms by roughly 20 percentage points.

What separates the two groups are the same types of “hard work” variables we saw back in March; a clear roadmap, employee involvement in redesign, guardrails, value tracking, and reskilling.

But the grind pays off. The companies that have gone through the complex and sometimes uncomfortable process of understanding themselves, their people, and their work are seeing real results and evolving into new businesses in the process.