Research Report

The Resilience Report: People, AI & Performance

Cover page of The Resilience Report 2025 by Pivot & Co featuring a dark background with blue digital wave patterns and white text.

How do top companies stay resilient as AI transforms performance and culture?

The Resilience Report is an insight into what CPG and Luxury leaders know and do differently to make transformation work.

Why this report matters

AI transformation is failing, and it's not the technology.

Most organisations are well-resourced and technically capable. What derails transformation is what happens between the people: the unspoken fears, the misaligned expectations, the cultural gaps that no dashboard can fix. This report names what's actually happening and what the leaders who get it right do differently.

We explored what really drives AI success beyond the technical: the human side of transformation.

We uncovered three critical fears that, if unaddressed, can quietly sabotage strategy, investment, and delivery. If unaddressed, these three patterns undermine strategy, investment and delivery, even in well-funded, well-led organisations.

Fear of Change

Worry about AI and its impact has become an obstacle to profitability as our people don’t understand the technology and our direction, resulting in unreliable delivery.

A distressed face emoji with furrowed eyebrows, teary eyes, and a wavy mouth, enclosed in a blue circle.

Fear of Missing Out

Hype around AI has become an obstacle to innovation as our people are afraid of missing out, so try and do everything, resulting in scattergun investments.

Icon of a stopwatch or timer with a clock face showing 3 o'clock and a small button on top, on a black background.

Fear of Not Belonging

Confusion around AI skills has become an obstacle to organizing as our people don’t know where or how they should apply their skills, resulting in haphazard strategy.

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What did these leading Consumer Goods and Luxury giants agree on?

That successful companies need a set of Transformation Tools to deploy when facing change. And that having this set of tools has become critical in the context of AI-driven transformation due to the urgency, speed and volatility of today’s economic landscape.

Line drawing of a cash register with money and receipts coming out of it.

Tackle Messy Spending

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Avoid Silo’d Innovation

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Address Chaotic Measurement

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Resist Hype Without Depth

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Rebuild Fragile Governance

What you will learn

  • The three unspoken fears derailing AI transformation and how to address them

  • The leadership behaviours that separate resilient organisations from the rest

  • What People-Ready and Data-Ready organisations do before they scale

  • How to apply the AI Resilience Framework to your own context

Who this is for

Senior leaders responsible for digital, data and transformation in Consumer Goods and Luxury organisations. Particularly relevant for CDOs, CHROs and CEOs navigating AI investment decisions where the human side of change is underweighted.

Our Valued Contributors

We set out to uncover the real secrets to success by interviewing senior Data & Digital Transformation leaders at global Consumer Goods and Luxury companies including Bel, Beiersdorf, Decathlon, Diageo, GS1, LVMH, Pernod Ricard and Unilever.

  • A professional headshot of a bald man wearing a dark suit jacket and a white shirt, smiling slightly against a plain light gray background.

    Axel Adida

    Beiersdorf, CDO

  • Black and white portrait of a woman smiling with short, tousled blonde hair.

    Béatrice Grenade

    Bel, ex-CDO

  • A professional headshot of a man with short, dark hair and a beard, wearing a dark suit jacket and a light blue collared shirt, against a plain light gray background.

    Cédric Lecolley

    GS1, Sales & Community Engagement Director

  • Portrait of a man with dark curly hair, wearing glasses and a black shirt, smiling against a dark background.

    Dipesh Patel

    Expert in Digital Transformation, Change, Data and AI

  • Smiling man with dark hair, beard, in a white shirt and dark blazer, against a plain white background.

    Gaël Demenet

    Decathlon, Global VP Data & Analytics Customer Growth & Sports Experiences

  • A man wearing glasses, a white shirt, and a dark blazer, standing in front of a textured patterned background.

    Ian Curd

    Diageo, Global Lead Data

    Foundations

  • Headshot of a man with short brown hair, light facial hair, wearing a collared shirt and a dark sweater, against a plain gray background.

    Luis Freitas

    Moet Hennessy LVMH, Senior Director Digital RTC & E-Commerce

  • Close-up of a man with short dark hair, a beard, and mustache, wearing a white shirt, indoors with blurred bottles in the background.

    Pierre-Yves Calloc’h

    Pernod Ricard Global CDO

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“Resilience is the organisation’s ability to absorb external shocks into its systems and by its people.”

Get People-Ready and Data-Ready with our AI Resilience Approach.

A circular diagram titled 'AI Resilience' with sections on AI priorities, talent, data, and strategy, illustrating key themes for AI development.

We help leadership teams connect the human and technical dimensions of their business, build clarity, reduce risk, and sustain momentum.

It has been informed by practical experience gained from supporting large-scale transformation programmes across Consumer Goods and Luxury Companies.

Ready to find out where you stand?

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The report shows what the leaders do differently.

SIGNAL is the six-week diagnostic that scores your organisation across strategy, people, operating model and data, then names the two or three AI initiatives worth funding. Senior-led throughout, with a roadmap you own at the end.

Explore SIGNAL