Boards that want faster AI adoption should measure the leadership team’s own AI use as a separate category from the rest of the company, and hold themselves to the same standard. Leaders stand to gain the most from AI, and in most companies they use it the least.
Who is right when the board says AI is too slow and the CEO says it is hype?
Usually both. BCG surveyed 351 CEOs and 274 board members in 2026, and 60 percent of the CEOs said their boards are too impatient with the pace of AI transformation, while boards that feel uncertain about AI overwhelmingly say the pace is too slow or inconsistent.
The board is right that adoption is too slow, and in my experience it is slowest in the leadership team itself. The excuses are familiar: too busy, no time to learn it, too complicated. The CEO is right that many boards have absorbed the hype and expect an overnight transformation that no company delivers.
Why should the leadership team’s AI use be measured separately?
Because leaders stand to gain the most from AI, so apart from the company’s technical specialists, they should be among its heaviest users. When a board measures AI adoption across the whole company, the leadership team disappears inside the average. Measure the leaders’ personal use of AI as its own category, and the board has something concrete to act on at its next meeting. If a leader is unsure what that personal use should look like, I set it out in What Should I, as a CEO, Be Doing With ChatGPT or Claude Every Day?
Does the board have to pass the same test?
Yes, or the CEO’s answer will be “you first”, and the CEO will be right. In the same BCG survey, 75 percent of board members said their AI knowledge is on par with or ahead of their peers, and the CEOs disputed that. Personal use settles the argument. A board that has used AI agents itself for a month asks completely different questions from one that has read about them, which is why most people forming an opinion about AI have never properly used it.
Why is AI not just another item on the board agenda?
Because AI is not a line item. It is the agenda. It changes how every other item on it is decided: strategy, risk, talent, budget. A board that files AI under one agenda point and the CEO who reports on it under that point will keep frustrating each other, because both are treating a change to everything as a change to one thing. That is also why the most important question a board can ask about AI is rarely about the technology.
Education and honest expectations have to run in both directions. The board learns what AI can and cannot do by using it. The leadership team shows its own use in the numbers. Then the board and the CEO are finally arguing about the same thing.
If you are leading your organization through this, this is the kind of work I do with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. → https://anglero.com/the-reset/
Strategic AI Advisor, MerkabaPhi AS, Oslo. 450+ keynotes across 30+ countries.
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