Three keys, not one owner

The usual debate is whether AI sits with the CIO or the business. That question is wrong. What actually matters is alignment across three executives at once, not a single owner.

Think of it like a nuclear submarine that needs three keys turned together:

• The CEO sets the mandate.
• The CIO or CTO owns the tech foundations, the data, the governance.
• The CFO has to be at the table early. AI initiatives get funded and measured differently to traditional projects, and if finance isn’t aligned from the start, every experiment hits a funding wall later.
• The COO is arguably the most important of the three keys, because they’re the one orchestrating the actual workflow redesign across the business.

None of them own it alone. Without all three in the room, the whole thing stalls.

Pick one workflow, not a use case catalogue

Most businesses build a catalogue of AI use cases and hope momentum builds. The better move runs the other way.

Pick one meaningful, end-to-end business workflow. One that matters enough to get attention, but won’t require flipping the whole company on its head. Redesign it with intelligence built in from the start, not bolted on and not edited at the edges. Rebuild it from first principles, assuming the tools already exist.

What running one workflow actually teaches you

Most things are already technically possible. The real question is how fast a business can turn that capability into an outcome, and how its leaders respond when the ground shifts underneath them.

You learn that from running one workflow end to end with a single business owner. You don’t learn it from a slide of isolated pilots, each reporting to someone different.

This can’t sit with IT

Technology enables the redesign. But if the business expects the technology team to drive workflow change end to end, it doesn’t work.

The most common failure pattern: leaders start with the technology instead of the business outcome, then automate isolated tasks instead of rethinking the workflow as a whole.

The other stall point: change readiness

Most leadership teams underinvest in change readiness. Navigating uncertainty is about to become a core business skill, not a side conversation.

Leaders asking senior, experienced people to unlearn what made them valuable for a decade need to be talking about that shift now, not after resistance sets in quietly. Silent resistance to change will undo even a good strategy. ADAPT’s Andy Foster, who focuses specifically on how leadership teams build alignment and lead through uncertainty, is a good resource for anyone wanting to go deeper.

None of this is a reason to slow down. It’s a reason to start in a different place: one workflow, one owner, three executives aligned before it begins.