The last time every client wanted to talk about the same thing at the same time, it was Y2K. It is happening again with AI, but with a key difference. This time, the money is outpacing the understanding.
From the internet to cloud to mobile, each technology wave follows the same pattern. Companies rush in and treat adoption as a what question, while it should be a who question.
We lead firms with different specialties. BDO’s is assurance, tax, and advisory; Gagen MacDonald’s specialty is people-centered change. Working together on BDO’s AI transformation confirmed what we both see with organizations: Technology creates the possibility of transformation, but people determine whether it succeeds.
WHY THE RETURNS AREN’T SHOWING UP
As boards set their 2027 budgets, one question will follow AI spending into nearly every conversation: Why isn’t it showing up in our results? Intelligence platform AI4SP found that for the first half of 2026, 76% of enterprise AI initiatives struggled to show return on investment, while in 2025, Gartner projected that more than 40% of agentic AI projects would be canceled by the end of 2027.
The reflex is to write a bigger check for a more capable platform. But buying more of what companies have struggled to turn into value cannot be the fix.
We believe most firms treat AI as a technology purchase. We treat it as a people transformation. Hand the best tools in the world to people who have no reason to care, and you have bought expensive software nobody uses.
But the response should not be a top-down mandate nor a pure grassroots initiative. At BDO, we call it guided grassroots: Leadership sets the direction, and the people closest to the work build the solutions. We are equipping and encouraging each of BDO’s 14,000-plus team members to find where AI belongs in their work, within parameters and guardrails.
LISTEN BEFORE YOU SPEND
Before we spend big on anything new at BDO, we listen. Our technology partner ran an anonymous diagnostic that nearly 3,500 colleagues answered in April and May. The results showed that 87% were already using AI, and more than 11,000 ideas came back for how our professionals could use AI to improve their work and processes.
Interestingly, almost nobody asked for an additional or different platform. They asked for help from AI with the many small things that rob people of time that could be spent on client relationships, developing their teams, and deep work. This proved the innovation engine already existed. It now needed structure, support, and governance to scale.
MAKE IT VISIBLE, THEN SCALE IT
BDO’s AI champions, embedded across the firm, help colleagues find useful applications, experiment within guardrails, and share what works, so ideas spread sideways. A firm-wide dashboard makes the work visible. It details which agents are in use, who built them, and who else relies on them.
At BDO, the rule is simple. Our people build it, we measure business impact, and we scale what works. Before our first formal training session, more than 600 team members had already built over 1,200 working agents. Two weeks after training an initial group of champions, the number of agents built had increased by roughly 80%, and the number of builders had grown by more than 50%.
To contextualize those numbers, consider when BDO’s brand language changes, which often happens twice a year. Updating nearly 2,000 design files used to take 20 people close to a month. Emma, one of our creative professionals, used AI to shape an automation that updates the designs in about a day. It only took one person. Encouragingly, the other 19 employees are still on that team. The month they used to lose to rework now goes back into the creative work they were hired to do.
Finding meaningful ways to help people effectively use AI is the first challenge. Keeping active what people build is another. Our technology partner’s research finds that without the internal capacity to continually maintain and improve agents, more than 60% of users stop engaging with them within three months. An agent creates value as people continue to use it, which means organizations need the internal capacity to sustain and improve what they build.
HOW BOARDS SHOULD LOOK AT IT
We do not recommend uncontrolled adoption. Leaders decide which tools people use, what information those tools can reach, and how to verify outputs. BDO’s first practice-wide agent is for quality checks. It flags what a reviewer should look at and preserves human judgment and decision-making authority.
As boards ask where the returns are, they should consider whether they have built an organization capable of discovering what AI is good for and then scaling what they find.
Outside providers will remain essential for models, infrastructure, and technical expertise. But they equip the lab. They are not the lab. The best AI lab in business? You already own it.
Maril Gagen MacDonald is the founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Matthew Becker is the chief executive officer of BDO USA.
