Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to meet the growing demands of business is top of mind for leaders, but closing the gap between hype and reality might be more about organisational design than skills.
In Rewiring the C-Suite: The Fast Track to 2030, a global report by IBM, 86% of CEOs said that employees have the skills to collaborate with AI, but the CEOs reported that only 25% of the workforce is using AI regularly as part of their job.
“The gap between capability and deployment is more an organisational design problem than a skills problem; if AI isn’t being used, treat it as an operating failure — not a skills issue,” the report said. “When CEOs estimate that only 25% of the workforce is using AI regularly in their job, they need their leaders to explain gaps, remove friction in workflows, and be jointly accountable for closing them.”
IBM and Oxford Economics surveyed 2,000 CEOs globally between February and April.
Redesigning functions to optimise transformation models is more about rethinking workflows than job roles, the report said. The CEO of today must identify and direct workflows that need to be transformed, rethink who should have authority over business areas, and give leaders the power to change how work is done.
For transformation-focused CEOs, creating the role of chief AI officer (CAIO) has become essential to bridge the gap between technology and human silos. In 2026, 76% of organisations have someone in this position, up from 26% in 2025. Every CEO in the survey expected the influence of CAIOs to increase by 2030.
“As AI continues to play a larger role in managing employees, breaking down the walls between IT and HR will become mission critical,” the report said. The report found that leaders who have made the most progress breaking down functional boundaries are executing on strategy faster than the competition.
One key driver of cross-business priorities is unmatched expectations. While piloting and experimenting initiatives in 2026 exceed executives’ predictions in 2025, CEOs noted that efficiency and savings (30% actual versus 51% prediction) and growth and expansion (10% versus 15%) fell short.
“Organisations that have redesigned five core business areas — technology, finance, HR, operations, and cross-functional collaboration — are [four times] more likely to have delivered on their business objectives,” the report found.
Autonomous AI use is predicted to grow significantly, especially across business functions where consistency and guardrails can be codified. “Today, CEOs in our survey say 25% of operational decisions are made by AI without human intervention,” the report said. “But by 2030, CEOs expect the share of operational decisions made by AI to nearly double to 48%.”
Humans won’t disappear from the loop, the report asserted. Between now and 2028, as a shift from decision-making to designing decision logic on behalf of AI accelerates, CEOs predicted that 29% of employees will require reskilling for a different role, and 53% will need reskilling to perform their current role more effectively.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.