Eric Vaughn, CEO of enterprise software giant IgniteTech, remains steadfast as he reflects on the boldest decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughn looked at his team and realized that his employees weren't fully engaged. His final response: He gutted the company and replaced nearly 80% of its staff. According to the number of employees surveyed by luck.
From 2023 to the first quarter of 2024, Vaughan said: luckIgnite Tech has replaced hundreds of employees, but declined to disclose specific numbers. “That wasn't our goal,” he said luck. “It was very difficult…but it was harder to change minds than it was to add skills.” By all accounts, it was a cruel calculation – but Vaughan insists it was necessary and says he would do it again.
For Vaughn, the writing on the wall was clear and dramatic.
“At the beginning of 2023, we saw the light,” he said. luck In an August 2025 interview, he added that he believes all high-tech companies are facing a critical tipping point when it comes to implementing artificial intelligence. “Now, I certainly believe this has changed to the point where I believe that every company, literally every company, faces an existential threat from this transformation.”
Where others saw promise, Vaughan felt a sense of urgency and believed that failing to move forward with AI could doom even the most robust businesses. he called a meeting of all members with his global remote team. Gone are the comfortable routines and quarterly goals. Instead, his message was direct. “From now on, everything is going to revolve around AI.” “We give each of you a gift, and that gift is a significant investment in time, tools, education, and projects to give you new skills,” he explained. The company started offering refunds for AI tools and instant engineering classes, and even brought in outside experts to promote it.
“Every Monday was called 'AI Monday,'” Vaughan said, requiring staff to work solely on AI. “We couldn't take customer calls, we couldn't work on budgets, we just had to work on AI projects,” he said, not just for technology employees, but for sales, marketing and everyone else at IgniteTech as well. “We had to build that culture. That was the key.”
This was a major investment, he added. Twenty percent of his salary was earmarked for mass learning initiatives, which failed due to public resistance and even sabotage. Belief, Vaughan discovered, is difficult to create.
“Early on, we encountered resistance. We were met with flat resistance: 'Oh, I'm not going to do this,'” he said. “And we said goodbye to those people.”
Repulsion: white collar resistance
Mr. Vaughan was surprised to find that their efforts were often carried out by technical staff, rather than marketing or sales. They were “the ones who were most resistant,” he said, expressing various concerns about what AI can't do instead of focusing on what it can do. Marketers and salespeople were excited about the potential to leverage these new tools, he added.
This friction is supported by extensive research. According to the 2025 Enterprise AI Deployment Report by Writer, an enterprise agent AI platform, one in three employees say they have “actively sabotaged” their company's AI deployment, and that number jumps to 41% for Millennial and Gen Z employees. This can take the form of refusing to use AI tools, intentionally producing low-quality output, or avoiding training altogether. Many people are taking action out of fear that AI will replace their jobs, while others are frustrated by lackluster AI tools and unclear strategies from leadership.
Kevin Chan, Writer's Chief Strategy Officer, said: luck The “eye-opener” in this study was the human element of resistance to AI.
“This sabotage isn't because we're afraid of technology,” he says. “In fact, there's so much pressure to do it right, and I get frustrated when I'm handed something that doesn't work.”
He added that Reiter's research shows that workers often don't trust where their organizations are going.
“When you're handed something that's completely different than what you want, it's so frustrating that sabotage starts, because then people are like, 'Okay, I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to figure it out myself.'” You definitely don't want this kind of “shadow IT” in your organization, he added.
Vaughn said he doesn't want to force anyone.
“You can't force people to change, especially if they don't believe in it,” he said, adding that belief is what he needs to embrace.
Company executives eventually realized they needed to hire what are known as “AI innovation specialists” at scale. This applies to sales, finance, marketing, etc. Vaughan said this time was “really difficult” because the situation at the company had been “turned upside down… we still didn't quite understand where we were or who we were.”
This was supported by several key hires, including Thibault Bridel-Bertomeu, who became IgniteTech's chief AI officer. This led to a complete reorganization of the company, which Vaughan called “somewhat unusual.” Essentially, all departments now report to the AI organization, regardless of domain.
This centralization has prevented duplication of effort and maximized knowledge sharing, Vaughan said. This is a common struggle in AI implementation, with Reiter's research finding that 71% of executives at other companies say AI applications are being created in silos, and nearly half of employees say they are forced to “understand the AI they produce on their own.”
no pain no gain?
In exchange for this difficult transformation, IgniteTech achieved incredible results. By the end of 2024, the company had launched two patent-pending AI solutions, including an AI-based email automation platform (Eloquens AI), with a fundamentally restructured team.
Financially, IgniteTech continued to perform well. Vaughan said the company had nine-figure revenues and ended 2024 with “nearly 75% EBITDA,” while also completing a major acquisition of Koros.
“By adding more people, we're allowing people to grow themselves and do things at a faster pace,” he said, touting the company's ability to build new, customer-ready products in as little as four days, a schedule that would have been unimaginable under the old structure. A few months later, Vaughn said: luck In a statement in early 2026, the company said it will continue to grow its headcount while recruiting AI innovation specialists globally for every department, from marketing to sales, finance, engineering and support.
What does Vaughan's story tell others? On one level, this is a case study in the pains and rewards of radical change management. But there is no doubt that his ruthless approach addresses many of the challenges identified in the writer's research, including a lack of strategy and investment, misalignment between IT and business, and a failure to engage champions to unlock the benefits of AI.
“Wolf boy” problem
IgniteTech is certainly not alone in tackling these challenges. Joshua Wöhle is the CEO of Mindstone, a company that provides AI upskilling services to employees, training hundreds of employees each month at companies like Lufthansa, Hyatt, and NBA teams. He recently discussed the two approaches Vaughan mentioned: upskilling and mass replenishment on his next appearance. BBC Business Today.
Wehle contrasted the recent examples of IKEA and Klarna, arguing that the former example shows why it is better to “reskill” existing employees. Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, made quite a splash with its decision to reduce the number of members of its customer support staff and only rehire the same roles in preparation for its transformation to AI.
“We're getting close to that point. [AI is] Smarter than most people in knowledge work. But that’s exactly why scaling trumps automation,” Wöhle wrote on LinkedIn.
A Klarna representative said: luck The company did not lay off any employees, but instead adopted several approaches to customer service, managed by outsourced customer service providers who are compensated based on the amount of work required. According to Klarna, the introduction of the AI customer service assistant reduced the workload of 700 full-time agents (from approximately 3,000 to 2,300), and the third-party provider redeployed those 700 employees to other customers. AI customer service agents are now “handling more complex queries than when we first launched,” Klarna says. That number has dropped to 2,200. Klarna said the contractor had rehired just two people in a pilot program aimed at combining highly trained human support staff with AI to deliver superior customer service.
In an interview with luckWehle said one of his clients was very upfront with his employees, ordering them to spend all Fridays retraining the AI and encouraging them to leave the company if they didn't report on their work.
He said it could be “kinder” to fire workers who resist AI, adding: “The pace of change is so fast that it's kinder to force people to go through it.” He added that he previously thought that MindStone could help make a big difference if all employees really loved learning, but after training literally thousands of people, he discovered that “most people hate learning and would avoid it if they could.”
Wehrle attributed much of the resistance to AI in the workforce to “wolf boy” issues from the technology sector, noting that NFTs and blockchain are technologies that have been touted as revolutionary but have “never had the real impact” promised by tech leaders.
“I can't really blame you” for resisting, he says. Most people are “stuck because they think from their workflow first,” he added, and conclude that AI is overrated because they want it to fit into their old ways of working. “Changing the way you work requires more thought and more inspiration.” But once you make the change, you'll see a dramatic increase. It's impossible for a human to keep five call logs in their head while trying to write a proposal to a client, but AI can, he says.
When asked for comment, IKEA echoed Wehrle, saying its “human-first AI approach focuses on augmentation, not automation.” A spokesperson said IKEA uses AI to automate tasks, not jobs, freeing up time for value-adding, human-centered work.
Writer's report notes that companies with formal AI strategies are far more likely to succeed, and companies that invest heavily in AI significantly outperform their peers. But as Vaughan's experience shows, investing without conviction and buy-in can be a waste of energy. “We needed to build a culture. Ultimately, we needed to recruit and hire people who were already on the same page. It was harder to change minds than it was to add skills.”
From a favorable point in early 2026, Vaughan said in a statement: luckthe monthly all-hands meeting remains exactly the same as before. “We've done away with the format of reviewing goals and metrics. Now we demo what the team has built.” He wanted to emphasize something else. Despite taking bold steps to restructure, he still doesn't think he's ahead of the curve.
“I just haven't been run over from behind yet,” he said. “The pace of change in AI is relentless. If we don't keep moving forward and keep learning every day, we're screwed.”
For Vaughn, there is no ambiguity. Will he do it again? He doesn't hesitate. They would rather endure a few months of pain and build a new AI-powered foundation from scratch than leave their organization in limbo.
“This is not a technological change. It's a cultural change, it's a business change,” he said, adding that he doesn't recommend other companies follow his example and replace 80% of their staff.
“I don't recommend that at all,” he said. “That wasn't our goal. It was very difficult.”
But at the end of the day, he added, everyone needs to be in the same boat and rowing in the same direction. Otherwise, you will not be able to reach your destination.
A version of this article was published on Fortune.com on August 17, 2025.
