Adaptovate study finds AI readiness gap in executives

Adaptovate has published a study on AI transformation readiness among North American C-suite executives. It found that 83% of respondents said their job security depends on scaling AI.

The survey of 300 executives in the US and Canada points to a wide gap between strategic intent and operational follow-through. While 78% said they know what their organisation needs to do to scale AI, only 19% said they have a company-wide plan in place.

That disconnect is central to the findings from the consultancy, which worked with Wakefield Research on the study. Respondents came from companies with at least USD $10 million in annual revenue and included Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Information Officers and Chief Technology Officers.

Executives appeared to feel the pressure more personally than institutionally. The study found 61% believed that failure to embed AI within two years could be existential for their business, well below the share who said their own performance evaluation and job security already depend on scaling the technology.

The pattern was especially pronounced at mid-sized companies. In that group, 81% of executives reported personal job-security risk tied to AI, while 51% said the risk to their organisation was existential.

Execution gap

The report argues that the main problem is not a lack of strategy. When respondents were asked a similar question without mentioning AI, 81% said their organisations were better at identifying opportunities than acting on them, close to the 78% who said they know what is needed to scale AI.

Paul McNamara, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Adaptovate, linked the findings to a broader issue in corporate change programmes.

"After building Adaptovate across ten countries, I've now watched two transformations up close - Agile, and now AI - and this data confirms exactly what we see with clients every day: strategy isn't the constraint anymore, it's the ability to deliver it," said Paul McNamara, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Adaptovate.

"The firms that separate themselves over the next two years won't be the ones with the best AI strategy. They'll be the ones that stop treating execution as a downstream detail and start engineering for it from day one," McNamara said.

The study also found that many companies are struggling to move beyond experiments. Some 90% of executives said they were concerned that their most promising AI pilots were not scaling across the organisation, while 82% said internal gatekeepers were slowing progress.

Only 19% said their organisation had a company-wide plan to scale successful AI work. A further 41% said scaling relied on a centralised transformation team, while 23% said it was left to individual business lines.

Talent strain

Skills shortages emerged as the leading barrier. More than half of respondents, or 55%, named a lack of skilled talent as the top obstacle to AI progress, ahead of budget constraints at 47%, organisational resistance at 44% and unclear strategy at 41%.

At the same time, executives expressed doubts about the long-term relevance of some of the roles they are trying to fill. The report found 88% believe AI agents will eventually eliminate many of the management positions they are currently struggling to hire for.

Ghaleb El Masri, Partner and Toronto Managing Director at Adaptovate, said the shortfall comes down to whether organisations build dedicated capacity for change.

"The execution gap sits in the capability organizations deliberately build and set aside for change, and that's a different thing entirely from the headcount running the business day to day," said Ghaleb El Masri, Partner and Toronto Managing Director at Adaptovate.

"Until that capability exists, the gap stays open regardless of how much talent or outside expertise an organization brings in," El Masri said.

Consulting record

The findings also cast doubt on the effectiveness of external advice in transformation efforts. Although 96% of executives said they had worked with management consultants, only 20% said those strategies were implemented effectively.

Among the reasons cited were poor cultural fit, missing technical expertise and misdiagnosed problems. The report added that practical adoption inside a business function often depends on informal ownership rather than a formal structure designed to sustain change.

Respondents were divided over where the friction sits inside organisations. Some 57% pointed to employees struggling with new workflows, while 43% pointed to managers struggling to implement them.

Cost oversight

The study also examined how companies assess the running costs of AI. It found 94% of executives had factored AI token costs into investment decisions, but only 23% said they did so on a regular, systematic basis.

That suggests many businesses are aware of the cost implications of AI tools without having a consistent process to govern them. The report said this can leave companies approving systems that become difficult to afford at scale.

Adaptovate framed the findings around four questions for executives assessing AI readiness: where to build AI in-house and where to buy it; which parts of the business should produce materially more output; which workflows need to run leaner; and who has the authority to track progress and remove blockers.

The consultancy operates across 10 countries, with headquarters in Sydney and Costa Mesa. It said the survey reflects a broader corporate challenge in turning plans into results. Among the headline figures, 96% had hired consultants, 20% said the work had been implemented effectively, and only 19% had a company-wide plan to scale AI.