Why Don't I Feel the AI Revolution in My Numbers?

Recent research from the American NBER confirms what many business leaders feel. Among nearly 6,000 CEOs, CFOs and top managers in the US, the UK, Germany and Australia, more than 80% say they have seen no measurable impact of AI on productivity or employment over the past three years.

On one side: headlines claiming nobody will have a job soon. On the other: internal numbers that have barely moved since Copilot was rolled out. Between those two worlds sits a misunderstanding about where AI actually creates value.

We see value emerge on three distinct levels.

The first is individual. The employee who saves an hour per week on emails and meeting notes thanks to Copilot. Useful, tangible, but it rarely moves anything at the level a CEO looks at.

The second level is about processes. An invoicing flow that goes from three days to three hours because you redesigned it with AI woven in. A customer service where not one employee works more efficiently, but the entire journey from ticket to resolution has been redrawn. Here the leverage really starts to work. And here you also touch how people work, which is harder than rolling out a licence.

Then there is the level where CEOs usually want to sit immediately: AI as the engine of the product or service itself. A feature that would not exist without AI. A proposition a competitor cannot quickly match, because they still have to lay their foundation.

But you do not get there just like that. Without the first level, you miss the AI literacy to see where it can really contribute. Without the second, you do not know the data flows and ways of working needed to build something structural on the third. You end up delivering an AI feature built on quicksand instead of a solid foundation.

The disappointment many CEOs feel often comes from exactly this: they measure their organisation against the third level while in practice they are still on the first.

Name the three levels separately and you get a different conversation. Less frustration about what is not moving, more clarity about where you can expect movement.