AI Profit Readiness Assessment
Eight questions, about two minutes, and a read on where the profit from your AI spend is leaking.
Take the free AssessmentFOR CEOs, PEOPLE LEADERS, COOs AND CMOs
We help you close the AI Profitability Gap™
The gap between what you were promised and what you got.
Your team is moving faster with AI, but the P&L looks the same as last year. Closing the AI Profitability Gap™ depends on how far the change reaches your people.
We move your people beyond surface-level AI, so the investment you've already made turns into real profit.
Who we are
The change management firm for the AI transformation of the workplace.
The AI Profitability Gap™ closes when people change how they work with AI, and that change is our work. We start with the C-suite and their senior reports and carry it through to the teams using AI every day.
The Problem
Nearly everyone is using AI. Hardly anyone is profiting from it.
Adoption already happened. The tools are in your team's hands every day. For most companies, the profit hasn't followed. You can see your team using AI. What you can't see yet is the payoff: more output, lower costs, or better margins from the money you've already spent. If that's where you are, you're not behind. Almost no one has cracked that part.
74%
of frontline employees are now regular AI users, up 23 points year over year.
Source: BCG, AI at Work, 2026
The real divide isn't who's using AI. It's who turns it into profit.
Why investment isn't paying off
The rollout ends at the front of the room.
It's Tuesday. The rollout looks like a win: the deck, the demo, the vision of an AI future. Then the experts leave, and nothing changes for the person actually doing the work. The tools sit half-used and the spend keeps running.
The value was never really in the rollout. It's in the last stretch, from the tool to the individual who has to use it well. That's the stretch almost everyone skips, and it's where we do our work.
Where the return leaks
AI reporting usually stops at the first two steps.
AI spend turns into profit through five steps, one after another. The first two are what you spent and how much the tools are used. Those are the numbers that usually get reported, and they often look healthy. The other three decide whether the money comes back, and they are rarely measured.
The chain runs Investment, Usage, Direction, Skill and Reinvestment, and it produces Return. Investment and Usage are measured. Direction, Skill and Reinvestment are not measured, and those three are the AI Profitability Gap. Return is the outcome the chain produces, not one of the three conditions.
From method to engagement
Where to start.
Closing the AI Profitability Gap™ runs through everything we do. You can start with a free assessment, and go as far as every team in the business. Each step up does more of the work with you.
Decades of experience
We have spent our careers leading people through marketing and technology change.
Why Average Robot
We've led people through technology upheavals before. We wrote a book about this one.
The profitability gap is a human problem, and the human side of change is our whole career.
Matt Perry
Co-founder & CEO
Matt has spent thirty years in marketing and creative, at M&C Saatchi, WPP, Omnicom, and Genero, where he launched and led the North American business. He has run this change with companies including Google, Meta, Hilton, and PG&E, and studied AI for business application at Kellogg. He co-authored The Elephant in the Algorithm and hosts the podcast.
Rob Cannon, PhD
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer
Rob is an organizational psychologist who studied at Cambridge and earned his PhD at Sydney, with eighteen years guiding people through change, including six years inside Sony Music and BMG as technology remade the music industry. He co-authored The Elephant in the Algorithm and hosts the podcast.
Stay in touch
Find us wherever suits you
Four ways to keep hearing from Matt and Rob, starting with the one that tells you where your team stands.
The book
The Elephant in the Algorithm, by Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD. It prints in December.
Get the pre-order linkListen
The Elephant in the Algorithm podcast, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Weekly newsletter
With People
Every Tuesday: the people side of making AI pay.
- One story from the week's news about AI at work, read through our book, The Elephant in the Algorithm.
- A few links worth your time, and most weeks a podcast conversation.
How we help
The future belongs to the people who get the most from AI.
We do not believe in a world where all workers are replaced by robots. Instead, we see a world where people get more out of an average robot than they could do on their own. That is the idea behind our name, and it is where your AI finally starts to pay.
Empowered people
Your team stops working around AI and starts doing its best work with it. Faster, and with less fear.
Efficient process
The gains land in the everyday workflow, not a one-off pilot. Output climbs and quality grows.
Profitable platform
The tools you've already paid for earn their keep. You only add more when they pay for themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions we get asked most.
What is the AI Profitability Gap™?
The AI Profitability Gap™ is the distance between what a company expected AI to deliver and what it is delivering. Underneath it sits a chain of five links in series: Investment, Usage, Direction, Skill, and Reinvestment. Every link has to hold before spending turns into profit. Return is what the chain produces rather than a link inside it, and it is the number a leader is already watching. Typical reporting and ROI measurement stop at the two ends of the front, spend and usage, which leaves three conditions in the middle that nobody measures. Direction: is the usage pointed at anything that matters. Skill: can people do more with the tools than the obvious. Reinvestment: is the time AI frees going back into work that creates value. BCG's AI at Work report (June 2026) found that 74% of frontline employees are now regular AI users, up 23 points year over year, so usage is rarely where the problem sits. The three conditions after it are the work Average Robot does.
Why doesn't AI spend show up in profit?
Most companies bring in AI experts for a rollout: a strategy deck, a big presentation, a vision of the AI future. Then the experts leave before the change reaches the people actually doing the work. The tools sit half-used while the spend keeps running, and the AI Profitability Gap™ grows every quarter it's left unaddressed.
How does Average Robot close the AI Profitability Gap™?
Investment is what you spend and Return is what comes back. The middle is closed by people and process, which is where Average Robot's three dimensions sit. Empowered People covers Usage and Skill: whether the team uses the tools, and whether it can do more with them than the obvious. Efficient Process covers Direction and Reinvestment: whether the work is pointed at something that matters, and whether the time AI frees goes back into work that creates value. Profitable Platform is the Return itself, which the chain produces rather than contains: the platform you already bought finally paying. They are not a separate framework sitting beside the chain. They are the chain, named. Average Robot starts with people and takes the change all the way to the individual doing the work rather than stopping at a leadership presentation, because people adopt the platform and the process turns adoption into performance.
What is the AI Profit Readiness Assessment?
The AI Profit Readiness Assessment is Average Robot's free starting point: a short assessment that shows a leader where their team's AI use really stands, where the biggest gap is, and what their first move should be. It's the entry point to Average Robot's product ladder, which continues with the AI Profit Workshop ($2,999, credited in full toward the Sprint), the AI Profit Sprint (from $19,999, Average Robot's flagship 90-day engagement).
Who founded Average Robot?
Average Robot was co-founded by Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD. Matt spent thirty years in marketing and creative, at M&C Saatchi, WPP, Omnicom, and Genero, and studied AI for business application at Kellogg. Rob is an organizational psychologist who studied at Cambridge and earned his PhD at Sydney, with eighteen years guiding people through change, including six years inside Sony Music and BMG. Together they co-authored The Elephant in the Algorithm and host a podcast of the same name.
Who is Average Robot for?
Average Robot works with the C-suite and their senior reports: the CEOs, Chief People Officers, COOs and CMOs who own what AI is supposed to return, with IT leadership alongside them. The fit is defined by the shape of the organization rather than its size. There has to be a specialist function inside the business that AI is landing on, and leaders who own it. The situation is consistent. The company knows it needs AI, has already tried, and the team is either not set up for it or is resisting it. That pattern looks the same on a marketing team as it does in operations, because the problem is psychological and organizational before it is technical.