Leadership bottlenecks slow AI adoption

Leadership bottlenecks, not technical issues, are slowing AI adoption, according to Cisco VP of engineering Jason Andrews and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck CIO Andrew Johnson. A May IBM survey of 2,000 global CEOs found 83% say AI success depends more on adoption than technology, and 77% say talent and technology roles are converging. Andrews and Johnson both cite change management as the primary challenge, with Johnson noting that organizational constraints and culture are far more demanding than technical capability.

At Cisco, VP of engineering Jason Andrews deals with all the same technical issues as every other company deploying AI, including ensuring it’s governed, secure, and integrating multiple data sources, legacy systems, and AI models. But these issues are relatively straightforward compared to the bigger challenges relating to the fast pace of change, specifically how AI can touch and transform nearly every aspect of business. “We’re thinking about it every day,” he says. “My belief is we’ll be seeing a massive acceleration of everything.” In coding, for example, he’s witnessing productivity increases up to 110% with AI assistants. “I can build apps or custom integrations a lot faster,” he adds. And the real benefit of AI isn’t just in speeding up individual steps in a process, but in making AI the core of a new business process. But building it from scratch puts even more pressure on organizations trying to get employees up to speed on new ways of doing things. “We want to move fast, train people, and get them onboarded,” he says. “But what I thought AI was going to do for my organization nine months ago is different from three months ago.” So by the time something is rolled out, it’s changed three times. “I struggle with the change management aspect,” he says. “The legacy model of change management isn’t fast enough. How do you create that constant learning?” One of the ways Cisco approaches it is to create communities where people can talk about these issues and share best practices and governance, and you have to keep people’s minds open that every day is going to be different than the last, Andrews adds. Cisco isn’t the only organization struggling with change management in the face of the AI tsunami. In a survey of 2,000 global CEOs IBM released in May https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/c-suite-study/ceo , 83% of them said AI success depends more on adoption than on the technology itself, and 77% said talent and technology roles are converging. “Thanks to Claude Code, our entire development cadence is exponentially greater than a year ago,” says Andrew Johnson, CIO at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a Denver-based law firm with about 700 employees and clients around the US. But, as with Cisco, the biggest challenge isn’t technical. “In our industry, with our circumstances, we’re probably less constrained by technical capability than organizational constraints, culture, aptitude, the need to bind people to technology, and what helps me and the client,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural shift that has to happen in our organization, which is far more demanding of my attention and complexity of thought than the technical stuff.” Companies that bill by the hour, such as law firms, may face additional challenges as attorney productivity increases because billable hours might go down. Alternatively, the total number of cases could go up as litigation becomes less expensive. Either way, firms that adapt will see competitive advantage, and the rest will fall behind, putting more pressure on the need for change management. “If people can’t embrace technology, we won’t be able to get a lot of value out of it,” says Johnson. “I’m talking to people about adapting their way of work. There are certainly a lot of people intrigued and anxious to dive in. They recognize the connection between the potential of the technology and what we do.” But helping everyone see that connection and then working with them to change their habits is difficult, and requires solid relationships and good communications. “That’s been far more of a bottleneck for us,” he says. To address the issue, the firm has developed a network of technology champions who also understand the legal side of the business. “Now we need lawyers who know how to use the technology and can articulate these things to the people we’re trying to reach,” Johnson says. But change management is only one leadership bottleneck slowing AI adoption. Companies also struggle with figuring out their vision for AI, with slow decision-making, and a tendency to focus on the past instead of the future. In another survey, this time of 950 business leaders released by Grant Thornton https://www.grantthornton.com/services/advisory-services/artificial-intelligence/2026-ai-impact-survey in April, 51% said strategy is the biggest driver of ROI when it comes to AI adoption, but 79% of operations leaders said they don’t have a fully developed and implemented AI strategy. “Having leadership understanding why AI is needed and what objective they’re trying to achieve is very important,” says Shivi Verma, senior manager of engineering at Docusign. “Sometimes leadership doesn’t have a strategy for their organization on how AI should be adopted. Many times it’s bottom-up, which creates a chaotic experience.” When Docusign started adopting gen AI, different teams and organizational units wanted to go in different directions. “All were coming up with their own strategy and tooling,” he says. So Docusign brought business leaders together to understand the pain points, and decide on the technology. “Getting requirements and placing a bet on a specific technology was important,” he says, “as well as pivoting to a different technology if needed.” In order to adapt to changes, the company wanted to have a nimble approach, starting with smaller use cases, with power users, and problem areas. “We try to plan for four to six months,” he adds. “We set expectations for our leadership that we place a bet with a specific technology, but want to be able to pivot.” Today, the leadership challenge front lines have moved yet again, to agentic AI. “Folks are creating their own agents and deciding their own permissions,” Verma adds. “We’re still coming up with a governance strategy.” When it comes to AI deployments, Dan Diasio, global AI consulting leader at EY and CTO for its US consulting business, admits he’s a bottleneck. There’s a great deal of interest in what AI can do, and using a variety of new AI tools. But since the firm deals with sensitive client data, safety is paramount. It’s a slow process, but important to build secure infrastructure, and to have trust in the technology. “That’s a reasonable bottleneck that makes sense,” he says. Trust in the tools they work with is essential because clients expect it. “Every tool we use has to go through a detailed security and information privacy impact assessment, as well as a whole other set of controls so they can be used appropriately and safely,” he says. These reviews can take a lot of time, though, and in the age of AI, speed is a highly valued currency. So how do you balance the two, when safety reviews can require input from a lot of different stakeholders and be extremely time intensive? “We’ve stood up a team to be able to quickly certify and address a variety of platforms,” Diasio says. “Instead of working with different departments in the way we used to, we’ve started identifying representatives from different departments into a cohort. Decisions we used to make in months now take weeks.” According to a West Monroe survey https://www.westmonroe.com/insights/why-speed-matters of more than 1,200 leaders released earlier this year, slow decision-making is already showing up on the bottom line. Nearly three out of four leaders said their organizations lose up to 5% of annual revenue to slow decision-making and delayed execution. And the top reasons for the delays? According to 40% of the managers surveyed, the problem was the skills gaps of overwhelmed teams, and 35% pointed to layers of management or approvals. Nearly half said they’re spending 10 to 25% of their time on rework, excessive approvals, and unnecessary meetings, and more than half say up to 50% of their projects fail or lose momentum to delays. When it comes to the decision about where to apply AI in an organization, the tendency, Diasio says, is to turn to the experts with the most expertise in the business. But these are the same people most likely to focus on improving on what they’re already doing. “And that often blinds people to what’s possible in the future,” he says. “That becomes a significant bottleneck.” So the solution is to revamp the decision-making process around the new reality. “What we see some advanced companies do is give people who don’t understand the process but understand the technology equal footing with people who don’t understand the technology but understand the process,” he says. “A lot of companies are disproportionately focused on just addressing their operating model right now.” Instead of focusing on what they’re currently doing, AI-native companies will start with a focus on the customer, he says. This shift in focus isn’t likely to show up immediately on the bottom line, or result in the highest possible number of pilots going into production. “If leaders are in a position where they’re justifying the use of a technology to the board or their CFO, they become a bottleneck when they start demonstrating their value in terms of the number of things they’re doing,” Diasio says. But 150 or 200 use cases deployed into production may feel like progress, like things are happening in the organization. But all these use cases are a waste of time and money if they’re applied to existing processes that don’t move the needle. “We see that happen in organizations today,” he says. “Maybe we need to reinvent the processes.” It’s no secret that companies will need to change in order to adapt to AI. Deloitte recently surveyed https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/technology-management/future-of-tech-leadership.html 660 global technology leaders and 81% said their current operating model can deploy and govern AI enterprise-wide, but 75% also said their organization must change its operating model within the next 12 to 18 months to drive greater value. AI ROI is real, says China Widener, Deloitte vice chair and US tech, media, and telecom industry leader. But it’s currently weighted toward efficiency gains, with broader business transformation and revenue upside still developing. Another Deloitte survey https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/what-we-do/capabilities/applied-artificial-intelligence/content/state-of-ai-in-the-enterprise.html showed that the clearest results from AI were in productivity, with 66% of organizations reporting gains, and cost efficiency, with 40% saying AI reduces costs. “However, revenue impact is still emerging,” says Widener. “Only one in five companies says AI is driving top-line growth today.” But optimism prevails, with 74% expecting it to do so in the future.