VITAL — four dimensions, one core

Value — What the other four have to add up to

Value is not a slogan here and not an outcome you can assert. It is what the four dimensions below either produce or fail to produce — which is why every claim in this series carries a source.

• 77% vs 20% — 77 percent versus 20 percent positive business outcomes, depending on how confident the organisation is in its talent. KPMG Global AI Pulse Survey

Intent — Why, before the tool

Naming the real problem AI should solve — before anyone buys anything. Most failure is decided here, in the weeks before a model is chosen.

• 95% — 95 percent of enterprise GenAI pilots show no measurable P&L impact MIT (NANDA / Project NANDA)
• 10-20-70 — 10 percent algorithm, 20 percent data and technology, 70 percent people, process and culture BCG
• 80/20 — 80 percent of the value of an AI initiative comes from redesigning the work, 20 percent from the technology PwC (2026 AI Business Predictions)
• #1 root cause — Miscommunication between the problem side and the solution side is the single most common root cause of failed AI initiatives — not the model, the data or the budget. RAND Corporation
• 40% by 2027 — Gartner predicts that more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027. Gartner

In the series: The 95% no one wants to own · Failure starts before the model · Value gap, not model gap

Trust — The real adoption curve

Whether people trust the tool, and whether leaders trust people. A tool no one trusts is a tool no one uses, however good it is.

• 66% / 46% — 66 percent use AI regularly, but only 46 percent trust it. KPMG / University of Melbourne (Trust, attitudes and use of AI)
• qualitative — Sustained AI use can erode trust within a team and the willingness to disagree — what the authors call trust ambiguity. Jayshree Seth & Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business Review
• qualitative — Trust in AI follows trust in leadership, not the accuracy of the tool. David De Cremer, Harvard Business Review
• 71% (2023) / 64% (2025) — 71 percent of employees report anxiety in connection with AI (2023); 64 percent of executives name fear of replacement, rather than augmentation, as a brake on AI adoption (2025). EY — two separate surveys
• 52% — 52 percent say they feel nervous about AI. Stanford AI Index 2026

In the series: Fear as the beginning · The innovator's dilemma of the individual · Trust follows leadership trust

Alliance — One team, not two halves

Work redesigned so humans and AI operate as one — the whole, not the halves. This is where the measured gains actually show up.

• +40% / -19pp — Within the capability frontier: +25% speed, +12% completion, +40% quality. Outside it: 19 points more often wrong. Dell'Acqua, Mollick, Lakhani et al. (Harvard/BCG RCT), 758 Consultants
• 84% — 84 percent of organisations have not redesigned work around AI Deloitte State of AI in the Enterprise 2026
• +15% (QJE 2025) — Support agents gain 15 percent productivity on average. The distribution is the actual finding: the least experienced improve both speed and quality, while the most experienced gain little speed and lose some quality. Brynjolfsson, Li, Raymond, Quarterly Journal of Economics
• 50% by 2027 — By 2027, 50% of companies that attributed headcount reduction to AI will rehire staff to perform similar functions, but under different job titles. Gartner

In the series: One team, not two halves · 84% haven't redesigned work

Leadership — What the machine can’t lead

Carrying people through the shift — and the agile freedom to act. No algorithm leads that for you, and no governance function absorbs it.

• 72% / 50% — 72 percent of CEOs are now the primary decision-maker on AI, twice as many as the year before; 50 percent see job stability tied to AI strategy. BCG AI Radar 2026
• 92% vs 62% (30 pts) — Where AI strategy is communicated clearly, 92 percent report a positive productivity effect — against 62 percent where communication is unclear. EY Agentic AI Workplace Survey
• 28% — Only about 28 percent of organisations have CEO-level ownership of AI governance. Those are the cases that correlate most strongly with bottom-line impact, with workflow redesign the number one EBIT driver. McKinsey (QuantumBlack, 'rewiring to capture value')

In the series: What the machine can't lead · Governance belongs in the C-suite · The 30-point communication gap

Every figure above, with its primary source, sample size and the caveats that apply: all 18 anchors on the evidence page.