AI Readiness: A CEO Mandate and Organizational Roadmap for Success
By[Randy Bean](https://www.forbes.com/sites/randybean/), Contributor. Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.
Aug 04, 2025, 06:56am EDT
AI Readiness: A CEO Mandate
The business world is buzzing with discussions about the transformational potential of AI and advancements in the capabilities of LLMs. Breakthrough innovations are making headlines almost daily - models are getting better and cheaper at a rapid pace.
A [2025 survey](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62adf3ca029a6808a6c5be30/t/67642c0d40b42a7d7e684f49/1734618125933/2025+AI+%26+Data+Leadership+Executive+Benchmark+Survey+120624.pdf) of Fortune 1000 and global AI and data executives found that 98.4 percent of these organizations are increasing their investments in AI and data.
There is much discussion in corporate boardrooms about how companies can derive maximum value from AI innovations and what the strategic investments for AI should be, with technology investments, risks and use cases being the dominant topics. This was the subject of a [November 2023 fireside chat](https://www.forbes.com/sites/randybean/2023/11/07/how-should-corporate-boards-be-thinking-about-generative-ai/?sh=2548e0f4403e) that I participated in at the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) in New York.
I recently spoke with my industry colleague Vipin Gopal, a pioneering leader in data and AI adoption within industry, about the challenges that organizations face and the steps they must take to enable AI readiness. Gopal is a longtime senior industry executive, who served as chief data and analytics officer for Eli Lilly and at Walgreens Boots Alliance, and previously served as senior vice president of analytics at Humana. Early in his career, he held data and analytics leadership roles with CIGNA and United Technologies, after completing his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Concentra.
Gopal comments, “It's tempting to think that investing in AI tools and technologies alone will take care of business. It does not.” He continues, “There is a critical piece of the AI puzzle that often goes overlooked: evolving the company culture to thrive in an AI-driven world and upskilling the entire company employee base.” The 2025 survey reported that 91.2 percent of the organizations surveyed found that cultural obstacles and resistance to change were greater barriers to adoption of AI than technology gaps or limitations.
AI capabilities are abundant. “A lack of organizational readiness is the greatest challenge that organizations face today”, says Gopal. It is notable that in the survey, only 37.3 percent of organizations report having created a Data and AI-driven organization, and just 32.5 percent have established a data and AI-driven organizational culture.
Questions that CEOs should ask
It is Gopal’s perspective that in his experience, organizations benefit most when CEOs directly lead the charge to drive this cultural transformation, given its critical importance. He emphasizes, “People are the key to enabling organizational change.” With 89 percent of companies believing that AI is likely to be the most transformative technology in a generation, the winners in the AI era will be those that invest in people and culture.
Even with the daily discussion of AI transformation in organizations, just 23.9 percent of companies report that AI capabilities have been implemented into production at-scale. While this is a notable improvement over the 4.9 percent that achieved this milestone in 2024, considerable work and effort remains to be completed for most organizations.