Eric Vaughan, CEO of Enterprise-Software Powerhouse IgniteTech, is unwavering as it reflects the most fundamental decisions of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was a “existential” transformation, Vaughn looked at the team and saw the workforce that was not entirely on board. His Ultimate Response: He tore the company into studs, replacing almost 80% of his staff According to the number of people reviewed within a year, luck.
During 2023, in the first quarter of 2024, Vaughn said Ignitetec had replaced hundreds of employees and refused to disclose a certain number of them. “That wasn't our goal,” he said. luck. “It was very difficult…but changing your mind was more difficult than adding skills.” It was a brutal calculation anyway, but Vaughn insists that it is necessary and says he will do it again.
For Vaughn, the writing on the wall was clear and dramatic. “In early 2023, we saw the light,” he said. luck In an interview, he added that he believes all tech companies face important inflection points regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence. “Now, I have certainly changed to believe this is all companies. I mean literally every company faces an existential threat from this transformation.”
Vaughn saw the urgency as others saw the promise. They believed that failing to advance with AI could be doomed to even the most robust businesses. He called for an all-hand meeting With his global remote team. No more comfortable routines and quarterly goals. Instead, his message was direct. Everything revolves around AI. “We give you one of you gifts, and that gift is a huge investment of time, tools, education and projects to give you new skills,” he explained. The company has launched AI tools refunds and quick engineering classes, bringing outside experts to evangelize.
“Every Monday was called 'Mondays,” Vaughn said in his mission to staff that he could only work with AI. “We couldn't make a customer call. We couldn't work on the budget. We had to work on AI projects alone.” He said this happened all over the board, not just for high-tech workers, but for everyone at sales, marketing and IgniteTech. “We had to build that culture. And that was… that was the key.”
This is a major investment, he added. 20% of the pay was dedicated to large-scale learning initiatives, failing due to massive resistance and even sabotage. The belief Vaughn discovered is that it is difficult to manufacture. “In those early days, we got resistance and flat out saying, 'Yeah, I'm not going to do this.' So we said goodbye to those people. ”
Pushback: Why didn't they board?
Vaughn was surprised that it was not marketing or sales that dug into the heels, but often by the technical staff. They were “the most resistant,” he said, and instead of focusing on what AI could do, he expressed various concerns about how it couldn't. Marketing and salespeople were keen on the possibility of working with these new tools, he added.
This friction is supported by extensive research. According to a 2025 Enterprise AI Recruitment Report from Writer, an AI platform that specifically supports enterprise clients with AI integration, one in three said they “actively sabotage” the company's AI rollout. This allows you to take the form of using AI tools, intentionally generating low-quality output, or refusing to avoid training completely. Many people act because of the fear that AI will replace work, while others are unhappy with the lack of AI tools and the unclear strategies from leadership.
Kevin Chong, author's chief strategy officer, said luck The “eye-worthy but big” of this study was a human element of AI resistance. “This sabotage isn't because they're afraid of technology. It's like there's so much pressure to get it right. And when you hand over something that doesn't work, you get frustrated.” He added that the writer's research shows that workers often don't trust where their organization is heading. “When you hand over something that isn't something you don't want, it's so frustrating that the sabotage begins, because people say, 'Now, I'm going to run my own thing, I'm going to get it for myself.' ”
Vaughn says he doesn't want to force anyone. “You can't force people to change, especially if you don't believe it,” he added that belief is truly something he needs to adopt. The company's leadership has finally realized that it must launch a massive recruitment effort for what has become known as the “AI Innovation Specialist.” This was fully applied to sales and finance. Marketing, everywhere. Vaughn said this time it was “really difficult” because things in the company were “upside down.”
Starting with someone who became Thibault Bridel-Bertomeu, Ignatatetech's Chief AI Officer, the couple's important employment helped. That led to a complete restructuring of the company, which Vaughn called “somewhat unusual.” Essentially, all departments are reported to AI organizations regardless of domain.
Vaughn said this centralization prevented overlapping efforts and maximized knowledge sharing. This is a general struggle in AI adoption, indicating that 71% of other companies' c-suites report that AI applications are created in silos and that employees are “left behind to grasp their own generative AI.”
no pain no gain?
In exchange for this difficult transformation, IgniteTech enjoyed extraordinary results. By the end of 2024, the company launched and fundamentally rebuilt two patent-pending AI solutions, including the platform for AI-based email automation (Eloquens AI).
Financially, IgniteTech remained strong. Vaughan said the company he said was in a nine-figure revenue range and ended in 2024 with “EBITDA near 75% EBITDA”. “You increase people… you give people the ability to increase yourself and do things at a pace,” he said.
What does Vaughn's story say to others? At one level, it is a case study of the pain and rewards of radical change management. However, his ruthless approach addresses many of the challenges that have been identified in writer research. Lack of strategy and investment, IT and business inconsistency, and failure to engage with champions who can unlock AI profits.
The problem with “The Boy Who Cryed a Wolf”
Certainly, IgniteTech is far from tackling these challenges. Joshua Wöhle is Mindstone's CEO, who resembles a writer who trains hundreds of employees each month in companies including Lufthansa, Hyatt and NBA teams and provides AI-upskills services to the workforce. He recently discussed two approaches described by Vaughn: appearance and mass exchange. Today's BBC Business.
Wöhle contrasts with the recent examples of Ikea and Klarna, with the former example showing why it's better to “reskill” existing employees. Swedish hoarding wage company Klarna has elicited considerable publicity for its decision to cut down on its customer support staff members with a pivot to AI, but has rehired it for the same role. “We're near the point [AI is] Smarter than most people who work in knowledge. But that's exactly why augmenting beats automation,” Wöhle wrote on LinkedIn.
The representative of Klarna said luck The company did not fire employees, but instead employs several approaches to customer service managed by outsourced customer service providers, which are paid according to the amount of work required. According to Klarna, the launch of AI's customer service assistants reduced workloads as well as 700 full-time agents (approximately 3,000 to 2,300), which amounted to around 3,000 to 2,300, along with third-party providers relocating these 700 workers. The AI Customer Service Agent is “handling more complex queries than it was when it was started,” says Klarna, who said the number has dropped to 2,200. Klarna said the contractor rehired only two people in a pilot program designed to combine highly trained human support staff with AI to provide excellent customer service.
In an interview with luckWöhle said that one of his clients was very dull with his workers and ordered them to devote all Fridays to AI retraining and if they did not report to any of their jobs, they were invited to leave the company. He said firing workers who resist AI could be “kind.” He added that he thought that if he made all workers really love learning, it would help make a real difference, but he discovered literally thousands of people, “Most people hate learning. They would avoid it if possible.”
Wöhle attributed much of the workforce's AI resistance to the “boy who wept a wolf” issue from the tech sector, citing NFTs and blockchains as revolutionary techniques that were billed as revolutionary but “had no real effect” promised by technology leaders. “You can't really blame them,” he said. Most people are “stuck because they think about it from the workflow first,” he adds, concludes that AI is exaggerated because they want it to suit the old way of working. “It takes more people to think more and change the way you work,” but once you do it, you see a dramatic increase. Humans cannot keep five call transcripts in their heads while trying to write proposals to clients, he offers, but AI can.
IKEA echoed Wale as she reached for the comment, saying that “people-first AI approach focuses on augmentation rather than automation.” A spokesperson said IKEA is using AI to automate tasks rather than work, freeing up time for value-added, human-centered work.
The author's report states that companies with formal AI strategies are far more likely to succeed, while companies that invest heavily in AI outweigh their peers by a large margin. However, as Vaughn's experience shows, investments that do not believe or agree can waste energy. “We had to build a culture. Ultimately, we had to go out and recruit and hire people who were already the same mind. Changing the mind was more difficult than adding skills.”
Vaughn has no ambiguity. Will he do that again? He doesn't hesitate: he wants to endure months of pain and build a new AI-driven foundation from the ground up, rather than the organization drifting out of nowhere. “This is not a technological change. It is a cultural change, a business change.” He said he would not recommend that others follow his lead and trade 80% of their staff. “I don't recommend it at all. It wasn't our goal. It was very difficult.” But at the end of the day, he added that everyone has to ride the same boat and row in the same direction. Otherwise, “I don't know where we're going.”
