Velocity Meter 3.24

🔥 Welcome to this week’s edition of Velocity Meter.

Companies aren’t just adopting new tools. They’re rebuilding how they work, rethinking how they lead, and reimagining what humans and machines can do together.

From autonomous agents making real business decisions to AI copilots built by employees themselves, the game has changed. And the companies playing to win? They’re shifting culture, structure, and strategy all at once.

Let’s dive into what’s happening this week.

🏢 AI Isn’t Eating Jobs—It’s Restructuring Organizations

This week’s shift? The rise of digital coworkers: autonomous AI agents embedded in operations, making real decisions—not just automating tasks.

📈 At Intuit, mission-based teams with embedded AI specialists have delivered an 8x increase in development velocity. More on that below.

🤖 At Colgate-Palmolive, employees build their own AI copilots—fostering buy-in and bypassing resistance.

🔐 At Visa, to meet employee demand for AI tools while ensuring data security, a secure RAG-powered chatbot retrieves regulatory data 1,000x faster, with citations.

But the transformation isn’t just technical—it’s cultural. McKinsey predicts the leading brands in 2025 will combine AI, immersive tech, and authentic social values. Turning AI into a megaphone for purpose.

💡Key Takeaway: The AI advantage no longer lies in choosing the right tool. It lies in how you design your people, processes, and platforms to use it.

🏗️  How AI is Shaping Industries

🪢 The Talent Tug-of-War: AI Proficiency and the Rise of Deepfakes

The job market is witnessing a significant shift towards AI proficiency. Companies are prioritizing AI integration, fundamentally changing skill demands. However, a concerning trend has also emerged: AI-powered deception in recruitment. A security startup nearly hired a non-existent backend engineer using an AI filter as an on-screen disguise in video interviews. This highlights the increasing sophistication of fake applicant scams and the need for robust verification protocols.

💡 Key Takeaway: While AI skills are in demand, companies must be vigilant against AI-driven recruitment fraud and refine their verification strategies.

🛡️ The Shadowy Side of AI and the Governance Imperative

As AI tools become more accessible, the rise of “shadow AI” – the use of AI by employees outside official IT frameworks – presents significant governance challenges. This uncontrolled dissemination of sensitive company data and the potential for inaccurate information can lead to poor decision-making. Organizations often unknowingly grapple with shadow AI, as employees leverage services like ChatGPT without corporate alignment. Establishing clear, acceptable use policies and technology controls is crucial.

💡 Key Takeaway: AI governance frameworks are essential to mitigate the risks associated with shadow AI, ensuring data integrity and compliance.

⚙️ The Perpetual AI Motion Machine

The buzzword? Continuous AI Transformation. It’s not a one-and-done deal; it’s about building a culture of perpetual adaptation and growth. Intuit, for example, has embraced three guiding principles around technology, people, and processes to fuel this ongoing innovation. Their strategies include rigorous technical reviews, embedding AI experts in cross-functional teams, and encouraging constructive conflict. This approach has led to tangible customer benefits, like small businesses getting paid faster through AI-powered invoice reminders in QuickBooks Online. These “mission-based teams” are driven by measuring customer benefit in real-world terms, contributing to both innovation and talent retention. Regular progress assessments ensure AI investments align with customer needs and market demands. This dynamic approach allows businesses to rapidly adapt to the ever-changing AI landscape.

💡 Key Takeaway: Building a culture of continuous AI innovation is crucial for maintaining competitive advantage. Regular technical reviews, cross-functional teams, and structured conflict resolution are key pillars.

🔋 Supercharging Productivity (But Watch Out for the Human Factor!)

Generative AI promises better, faster, easier, and cheaper workflows, with a potential $4.4 trillion in productivity growth. Early adopters are already seeing results in areas like supplier negotiations and equipment maintenance. A European automotive supplier achieved a 20-30% time saving while improving code quality using gen AI. However, realizing this potential requires more than just implementing the technology.

A recent survey reveals a significant disconnect between executives and employees, with half of company leaders acknowledging that AI is “tearing their company apart.” Employees harbor skepticism and frustration, often stemming from fears of job displacement and dissatisfaction with current AI tools. As May Habib, CEO of Writer, aptly put it, “Asking those employees to embrace AI is like ‘asking a turkey to vote for Thanksgiving.” Trust in AI is intrinsically linked to trust in leadership. Employees won’t trust AI if they don’t trust their leaders.

💡 Key Takeaway: While AI offers immense productivity gains, managing employee experience and building trust are critical for successful implementation. An “AI-leader combination” that involves employee discussions and transparent decision-making can effectively reduce anxiety.

📊 AI by the Numbers

🧑‍💼 72% → The percentage of small businesses feeling positive about how AI is empowering their operations (Source: Paychex)

💸 $3.8B → Capital raised by AI agent startups in 2024. Nearly triple the amount raise in 2023. (Source: CB Insights)

🧠 94% → The percentage of consumers who remain loyal to brands with genuine and transparent actions, a trend amplified by AI and other technologies. (Souce: McKinsey)

📄 45.2% → The proportion of all enterprise AI application transactions attributed to ChatGPT, despite it also being the most blocked AI tool (Source: SaaStr)

📉 50% → Unilever’s cost reduction in product shoots using digital twins (Source: Adweek)

💰 $90 million → The estimated annualized efficiencies Intuit expects from its AI investments within their customer success organization in the first half of the fiscal year alone. (Souce: HBR)

📰  5 AI Headlines You Need to Know This Week

⚡️ Execs Admit: AI Is Causing Culture Cracks: A new survey reveals that 50% of enterprise leaders feel AI is “tearing their company apart”—exposing a growing disconnect between top-down strategy and frontline adoption.

💡 Google Turns Gemini into a Creative Powerhouse: The new Canvas feature transforms Gemini from chatbot to full-fledged workspace—enabling live coding, document collaboration, and voice-guided walkthroughs.

🎥 xAI Acquires Hotshot to Fuel Video Intelligence: Elon Musk’s xAI snapped up video startup Hotshot, accelerating its move into multimodal AI—where text, image, and video understanding converge.

🛡️ AI Supercharges Insurance—but Legacy Tech Lingers: From risk modeling to fraud detection, AI is overhauling property and casualty insurance. But many players still struggle with outdated infrastructure.

🤝 AI Rewrites the Brand-Agency Playbook: Agencies are moving from executors to AI-powered strategists—using automation to personalize campaigns and free teams for higher-level thinking.

💻 Tech is Easy. 🤝 Trust is Hard.

AI fails when humans resist it. And they resist it when it feels imposed, not integrated.

The most successful transformations aren’t driven by smarter algorithms—they’re driven by smarter leadership. When employees trust the process—and their leaders—they don’t just adopt AI. They elevate it.

That’s your edge. Build trust first. The rest will follow.

📩 Need Help Navigating AI?

At Velocity Road, we help middle-market companies seamlessly integrate AI into their operations—driving efficiency, scaling automation, and enabling smarter decision-making. Whether it’s strategy, implementation, or change management, we ensure AI delivers real business impact.

Let’s explore how AI can transform your business—schedule a consultation today!

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See you next week,

— The Velocity Road Team