As AI continues to reshape our lives and businesses, I’m frequently reminded of Radiohead’s groundbreaking album OK Computer, which inexplicably turns 30 next year. While I’m genuinely positive about technology and change, the album’s central question has taken on a new urgency for me: where do people fit in a world of increasing automation?
That question matters because AI transformation cannot stop at adoption or simply getting people to use the tools. If we measure only active use, any investment risks becoming a series of expensive subscriptions that add nothing but additional overhead.
Instead, transformation needs an absorption approach: giving people the frameworks, guidance and encouragement to use AI to transform workflows, processes and the business.
This is one of the valuable lessons we’ve learned as part of our own transformation that culture and engagement are as important as technical understanding and implementation. Unless people understand why AI matters, how it helps them and what needs to change in the way they work, an AI strategy will struggle to create impact.
The gap between activity and impact
The Times recently reported that about 90% of companies have yet to see any financial boost from AI. Accenture’s UK research makes the issue even clearer: only one in ten UK organisations has successfully scaled AI or embedded it into core operations, leaving productivity gains concentrated with individuals rather than across whole enterprises.
This highlights one of the problems of thinking about AI solely in terms of adoption rather than absorption, as though AI is just a fancier way of doing what is already being done. Buying adoption doesn’t naturally lead to the absorption needed for an organisation to benefit from actual change.
The danger is that businesses confuse activity with progress: another platform, another pilot, another proof of concept, without changing how work actually gets done.
Of course, many individuals are already using AI to write, summarise, analyse, generate and automate. In many cases, they are working faster. But faster work doesn’t automatically create better or faster businesses. If the workflows, approvals, incentives and commercial models around them stay the same, the value leaks away.
AI absorption adds up to more than AI adoption
McKinsey’s latest State of AI research found 88% of organisations regularly use AI in at least one business function, but only 39% report EBIT impact at enterprise level. What’s interesting is that high performers are more likely to have fundamentally redesigned workflows.
The challenge for businesses is to move away from solely focusing on adoption and consider the larger absorption process. Absorption is more complex, so it needs a realistic approach to what ROI will look like and when it will happen, and a long-term commitment to see it through.
Absorption is also an ongoing, iterative process that responds to change across the business (and outside it). It requires a dedicated transformation effort that creates the structure to guide development and encourage everyone to ask how work, behaviours, skills, cultures, processes and measures will change to work best with the technology.
To do this successfully, businesses need to do more than supply an AI tool. They need to communicate clear guardrails, create opportunities to share learning and embed practical support.
Putting absorption into practice
At MISSION, there was already good work happening across the business in isolation, teams that were doing exciting things for Clients using AI.
For all that work to move from adoption to absorption, we needed to build an AI transformation strategy at Group level: a vision and steer to resolve the inevitable duplication, questions around ownership and governance and a fragmented approach to L&D.
Our philosophy is how do we enable people to experiment confidently and apply their thinking to their Clients? In other words, how do we give Agencies the conditions to move faster and more safely?
We’ve added immense value around governance, including clear compliance guidance, safe access to the right tools and commercial frameworks. We’ve also been focused on inspiring and educating with shared examples of what is working and stronger learning pathways, including AI apprenticeships.
Such a clear framework enables Agencies to keep everyone safe while empowering people to explore AI’s creative and operational benefits across different Clients, sectors and audiences.
Why one launch email won’t work
What’s been fascinating is how quickly our conversations have shifted from platforms and technology to how to change the way we work. BCG puts it neatly: 10% of AI transformation effort should focus on algorithms, 20% on technology and data, and 70% on people and processes.
That human side is difficult. Firstly, people don’t neatly divide into two groups: champions or blockers. There is a full spectrum, from real excitement to true scepticism, and people move along it. Secondly, AI raises questions about quality, control, creativity, trust and the value people bring.
You cannot solve that with one launch email. Absorption takes sustained change management: repeated communication, visible advocacy, long-term commitment and enough tenacity to keep going after the initial enthusiasm fades.
You have to communicate repeatedly and in different ways. We’ve created advocates around the business because they help make the change real when leaders are not in the room. Most importantly, we show people the benefits, not just tell them they exist.
You also need teams to come together and look at what they’re doing. Before AI, there was of course value in looking at processes and workflows to make them as efficient as possible. AI can help identify, design, refine or even replace processes, but it won’t always be the right answer. Only the people using a process can show you that.
More value will come from reinvestment
While promises of 80% productivity gains seem outlandish, if we assume a modest 10% productivity improvement, what could that mean in practical terms? I like to frame it in terms of time saved: it’s about 45 minutes a day per person. The real question is what you do with that time.
In an adoption approach, that time is simply swallowed by the same old systems and not much changes. In an absorption approach, it is deliberately reinvested into learning, better processes, new roles, healthier workloads, better Client outcomes and different commercial models. It’s where transformation becomes much more interesting and more human.
It also becomes the driver for new conversations with Clients. Both parties should benefit from these gains, enabling us to develop new products and services, use data better, price value differently and get further upstream with Clients to the benefit of their bottom line and ours.
OK AI: the honest route to AI value
Transformation never happens in a vacuum and it’s never “done”. It’s an ongoing process in response to the changing world inside and around a business. In our industry, businesses have often felt the pressure to be as slick and persuasive as the marketing they create. However, when it comes to the transformative power of AI, we need more honesty.
AI transformation is a work in progress for everyone across a business. Everyone is at different stages, with different pressures, risks and routes into adoption and absorption. The only real way forward is a clear change plan that people can understand, trust and act on.
That brings me back to OK Computer. The promise of “fitter, happier, more productive” is a warning about progress that ignores people and how they work. If we force productivity gains through old systems, we risk creating more problems than we solve.
What we should all be aiming for isn’t fitter, happier and more productive AI adoption. It’s creating the framework for AI absorption that leads to better work, better decisions and better businesses. That starts with making people feel confident about where they fit now and in the future.
And avoid us all becoming Paranoid Androids.
