How are Business Leaders Using AI to Remain Agile?

Business leaders are placing speed and agility at the heart of their competitive strategies as artificial intelligence transforms industries at an unprecedented pace. According to research from Deloitte, seven out of 10 business leaders say their competitive strategy over the next three years is to adapt quickly and remain nimble amid rapid AI investments across sectors.

The findings come from Deloitte's annual Global Human Capital Trends Report, which surveyed more than 9,000 business and human resources leaders across 89 countries and a range of industries.

Leaders identified two critical drivers of success in today's business landscape: accelerating the rate at which their people can perform and increasing its ability to adapt to changing market needs.

The research indicates that building this culture requires a business to invest in workforce redesigns that encourage human-AI collaboration and create learning and development opportunities that improve AI literacy across their organisations.

Human capabilities drive AI returns

Deloitte's research finds that the majority of businesses takes a tech-focused approach when it comes to AI integration – but a business is 1.6 times more likely to not see returns on their AI investments. Instead, Deloitte recommends that a business prioritise building up its human capabilities alongside its technological ones by taking a human-centric approach.

To achieve this, business leaders will need to rethink their businesses' approach to culture to create an environment where people and AI agents can work together seamlessly. Those that redesign employee workflows and roles to support this relationship are more likely to deliver meaningful work with the technology and see higher investment returns, according to Deloitte.

Accenture has done just that, announcing in 2025 it was bringing its strategy, constant, technology and other teams into one integrated business unit called Reinvention Services. According to the company, this function has been designed to create solutions faster and embed AI more easily into the company's delivery.

Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, said of the change, "Today, our clients need more value faster, and Accenture is their reinvention partner of choice. These changes to our growth model will allow us to deliver that value and continue to scale our business by being an even stronger engine of reinvention that more rapidly delivers the power of gen AI. We are writing the playbook for how to be the most AI-enabled, client-focused professional services company in the world and a great place to work for our people – our reinventors."

Rethinking learning and development

Part of AI integration centres on what Deloitte refers to as softwiring, which includes ensuring that leadership and company culture give employees the trust and confidence to experiment and learn with AI. If systems are built to encourage continuous learning, employees are more likely to feel empowered by disruption rather than shy away from it.

This could be particularly important as the skills gap rises, with research from the Josh Bersin company finding that 74% of organisations says it is not keeping up with their businesses' need for new skills. To challenge this, the research recommends that an organisation needs to fundamentally reinvent the way they approach learning and development opportunities in their organisation.

Josh Bersin, CEO of the Josh Bersin company, said: "Our skills challenge at work is not one of 'learning' or 'training'. Rather it's a problem of dynamically sharing information, enabling people to explore, question, and apply new ideas. The traditional pedagogical paradigm of "training" is holding us back."