AI use isn’t about firing people, it’s about making the people you already have more productive. You have to change your corporate system/culture to adapt to that:
However, when finance leaders seek to identify where this return appears in terms of headcount shifts or cycle-time compression, the answers are less clear. These gains remain trapped inside individual workflows unless leadership intentionally redesigns roles and budgets to capture the reclaimed time. This occurs because saved time is often re-absorbed into low-value activities—like more internal meetings or unnecessary emails—rather than being structurally harvested through role reclassification or a mandate and clearance to shift time toward higher-value strategic work.