Earlier this year, Deloitte published its 2026 Global Human Capital Trends, a survey of more than 9,000 leaders across 89 countries, and one pair of numbers does the work. Sixty-six percent of leaders say intentionally designing how humans and AI work together is important to their success. Only 6% say they are actually doing it. Nearly everyone sees the work that matters. Almost no one has started it.
Why It Matters
The gap is not AI capability. Nearly 60% of workers already use AI on their own. The gap is work design, and ignoring it is expensive. Most organizations, 59% of them, took a tech-focused approach and left the workflow untouched. They are the least likely to see the returns they expected. The ones that redesigned the work first, deciding where human judgment adds value and where the machine adds scale, are twice as likely to beat their own AI ROI targets. Same tools, different results, and the difference is design.
The Decision
The question worth asking this week is whether your last AI investment bought a tool or changed the work. A reasonable CEO can argue either side. Redesign is slow, and 7 in 10 leaders say their edge this year is being fast and nimble. But speed that skips the redesign is the 59% path, and that path is the one underperforming.
What To Do This Week
- Pick one workflow where you have already deployed AI. Ask the owner one question: did we redesign how this work gets done, or bolt AI onto the old process?
- On your top AI use case, ask a direct report to mark where a human still decides and where the machine runs, and whether anyone drew that line on purpose.
- Name one metric for an AI initiative that measures the work outcome, not how much the tool gets used.
What Not To Do
Do not confuse deployment with design. Buying the tool is the easy path, and it is the one leaving returns unclaimed. Do not hand the redesign to HR as a culture project, because deciding where humans and machines each earn their place is a call about how the company operates. And do not let fast and nimble become the reason you skip it. This year the companies that slowed down to redesign the work are the ones pulling ahead.
Signal Boost
Deloitte, Designing Human-AI Interaction (2026 Global Human Capital Trends) - the chapter behind this week’s numbers. Read it for the split Deloitte draws between designing AI for business outcomes alone and designing for how people actually work.