Founder,
Gaurav Bhagat Academy
Artificial intelligence has rapidly risen to the very top of corporate priorities, even for the most experienced leaders. Previously a subject for IT professionals, AI is now everyone’s business across the C-suite. This is both driven by opportunity and by urgency. The breakthrough in generative AI in late 2022 (with applications such as ChatGPT) triggered an arms race in corporate education. Leaders have observed how AI use burst forth throughout business operations, from marketing to accounting. Boards of directors and CEOs are now even more certain that AI literacy needs to be a leadership staple.
Why AI Literacy Is a Leadership Imperative
With all the excitement, most of the top leaders discreetly admit that they do not really understand AI. This capability deficiency has tangible consequences. If leaders are not even minimally AI literate, they risk misaligning AI programs with business strategy or being manipulated by hype. If leaders lack minimum AI literacy, they have a risk of misaligning AI initiatives with business strategy or being duped by hype. Misinformed investments are a genuine possibility: one study estimated that although 98% of businesses are investigating AI, just 4% have seen meaningful returns on those investments.
Often the culprit is poor executive guidance, projects pursued without a clear understanding of AI’s capabilities or limitations. The opportunity cost is high: CEOs who can’t discern transformative AI use cases from trivial ones may underinvest in game-changing innovations or overspend on hype. AI literacy has thus become a core leadership skill. Today’s C-suite and CEO colleagues must understand at least the basics, not code algorithms, but inquire the right questions and embed AI into business strategy.
Generative AI Redefining Executive Roles
AI is essentially redefining leadership positions, with generative AI compelling executives to incorporate technology into everyday decision-making and strategy. CEOs no longer sit back as passive sponsors but are now active AI ambassadors, individually testing products such as ChatGPT or analytics dashboards to automate decisions and expose insights. CFOs are integrating AI into financial operations, employing it for financial reporting, fraud identification, and error detection, and managing investments in AI infrastructure and heading internal AI training initiatives.
Revenue leaders such as CMOs and sales executives are using generative AI to drive hyper-personalized marketing, predictive analytics, and real-time sales enablement to emerge as AI-fueled growth leaders. CHROs, on the other hand, are leading workforce transformation by implementing organization-wide AI literacy programs, creating reskilling initiatives, and embracing AI in recruitment, talent management, and employee support, along with being champions of ethical and responsible AI adoption.
Executive Education: Bootcamps and Business School Courses
An increasing network of executive AI education is enabling leaders to quickly develop fluency, with leading universities such as MIT, Wharton, INSEAD, Harvard, and Kellogg providing brief, strategy-oriented AI courses that integrate case studies, governance, and ethics with practice applications, often including generative AI modules since 2023. Consultancies like McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, and specialized trainers like Cambridge Spark and Silicon Valley’s “AI First” accelerator conduct immersive bootcamps where executives develop hands-on experience, evaluate organizational AI maturity, and build adoption roadmaps.
In addition to formal education, peer learning and in-work coaching play an essential role too: sector-wide forums such as the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance promote common learning, while firms such as Microsoft invite leaders to try things out firsthand with AI tools, accompanied by reverse-mentoring from younger specialists, making AI education at the top repetitive, hands-on, and infused into everyday leadership activity.
An AI-Ready Leadership for the Future The word is out
Historically, a CEO would have outsourced all technology issues to the CIO or CTO. In the AI age, that is no longer an option. AI literacy is as essential to executives as financial literacy or strategic planning. Firms that get it are making the necessary investments. Ultimately, C-suite skilling up is all about linking technology and business value. When senior executives truly get AI, they are far more likely to see high-impact use cases, make savvy investments, and steer their firms through digital disruption. They can create a company culture in which all workers across levels feel empowered to innovate with AI, not fear it.
To sum up, the future with AI requires “learning leaders”, executives who accept learning as part of their job. They are already leading their organizations with greater assurance into the world of AI. Those who don’t may find themselves struggling to understand the forces shaping their industry. As AI pioneer Sam Altman remarked, the progress we’ll see in the next decade will astonish us. For CEOs and their C-suite colleagues, the best way to avoid being astonished by the future is to actively engage in learning, thus helping to shape the future. Even the topmost leaders are in the classroom again now, because when it comes to AI, no one is beyond learning.
– author is Gaurav Bhagat, Founder of Gaurav Bhagat Academy
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