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:
- The public release of the firm's six-step people transformation approach, refined over the last four years of AI programmes with corporate partners,
- A new technology partnership and,
- The formation of an Advisory Group of senior AI leaders and practitioners.
Why The DO is different
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:
- Leadership and Alignment: Equipping senior leaders to set direction, make decisions, and lead their organisations through AI-driven change.
- Workforce Capability and Upskilling: Developing the skills and behaviours required to operate effectively alongside AI.
- Organisational Activation: Embedding AI into ways of working, processes, and culture so that strategy translates into measurable outcomes.
2026 opportunities for senior leaders and their teams
In 2026, The DO is partnering with a wider range of organisations on bespoke AI transformations. Every engagement is built around the same conviction: AI investment only pays off when the people around it are energised, equipped, and aligned — across leadership, workforce, and culture. Throughout the year, there will additional opportunities for members of our community and interested individuals to engage with The DO:
- Human-AI Readiness Tool: a diagnostic already in use across several of The DO's corporate partners. Get your readiness score.
- Silicon Valley Summer School: in partnership with the World Economic Forum's SmartStart Initiative, the inaugural cohort runs the week of August 10. Open to members of the DO Community as well as WEF Global Shapers. Applications launch today.
- DO Summit, Berlin, September 15: Bringing together 100 corporate partners and AI workforce experts for the first cross-partner sharing of insights from the Human-AI Collaboration practice. Request your invitation.
- AI-Human Collaboration Leadership Circle: partner companies will be invited to join a small exclusive group to share best-practices and discuss questions of competitiveness and responsibility on an ongoing basis.
The opportunity The DO is built for
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
About 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.
