The DO this week announces the launch of a dedicated AI transformation practice — Human-AI Collaboration — continuing thirteen years of work in leadership, capability building, and organisational change. The practice arrives at a moment when AI strategies are increasingly stalling on the human rather than the technical side of the system, and when the organisations getting the human side right are pulling decisively ahead.
The launch is accompanied by three commitments: 1) the public release of the firm's six-step people transformation approach, refined over the last four years of AI programmes with corporate partners, 2) a new technology partnership and3) the formation of an Advisory Group of senior AI leaders and practitioners.
The DO is the purpose-driven specialist that global consulting firms cannot be — entirely focused on the human side of AI transformation. The practice does not replace technology investments or the work of consulting firms; it is what makes that work return value. The DO steps in to drive adoption, behavioural change, and leadership alignment — the layer where 63% of implementation failures occur and where the deepest competitive advantage is built.
The firm rejects the narrowest reading of AI transformation as a restructuring exercise. The DO positions its practice as a Growth Engine — an alternative to cultural collapse and opportunity for leading organisations to build the workforce of tomorrow.
The DO partners with companies on three connected workstreams:
The DO is opening four ways for existing and prospective partners to engage with the practice this year:
Worldwide AI spending is projected to surpass $1.5 trillion in 2026 (Gartner). Yet a recent MIT NANDA Initiative study (2025) found that 95% of enterprise AI pilots are failing to deliver measurable P&L impact. Analyses from BCG and McKinsey converge on a single explanation: the technology was deployed faster than the workforce was equipped to use it. Approximately 80% of AI investment flows into strategy and technology, while 63% of implementation failures trace back to human factors — leadership alignment, capability building, and execution.
The DO calls this dynamic the Pilot Paradox: technically sound AI solutions that fail to scale because the people around them were treated as the last variable rather than the first. The new practice is built to invert that order — and to position people as the multiplier that converts AI investment into measurable outcomes.
Organisations are entering a new phase of AI adoption — moving from experimentation to enterprise-wide execution. The leaders winning at this aren't the ones with the biggest tech stack. They are the ones who treat their people as the multiplier on their AI investment, not the lagging variable. That is the work we have been doing with our partners. We are formalising it now because the moment demands it.
— Florian Hoffmann, Founder, The DO
The DO is a global learning firm focused on leadership, transformation, organisational performance, and positive impact. For more than a decade, the firm has worked with owners, senior executives and organisations globally to catalyse the implementation of complex change initiatives, with a particular emphasis on aligning strategy, people, and execution. Partners include H&M, Mars, Mercedes-Benz, and dozens of leading universities and research institutions worldwide.
