Great AI Expectations
Boards want companies to move faster on AI. But their expectations may be running ahead of what the technology—and their organizations—can deliver.
Key Takeaways:
- More CEOs feel that their boards are trying to rush AI transformation and overestimate what the technology can replace.
- The pressure could divert attention and resources away from potentially more promising projects and undermine transformation efforts.
- Experts say the goal is not to just move faster on AI,but to make smarter decisions about where and how it can create lasting business value.
Are Boards Asking the Wrong Questions About AI?
The CEO had a problem. The board wanted the company to move faster on an AI-driven transformation of its business, and directors were growing impatient with the pace of progress. But behind the scenes, some promising AI pilot projects hadn’t yet produced meaningful returns, and there were plenty of other operational priorities. Could the CEO persuade directors that their ambitions were outstripping the company’s current capacity?
Could boards’ impatience with AI actually undermine the transformations they’re trying to accelerate?
This tension may be increasingly common in corporate boardrooms. According to a 2026 survey, 61% of CEOs believe their boards are rushing AI transformation, while 35% say directors overestimate what the tech can replace. Meanwhile, Korn Ferry research finds that 62% of directors consider AI proficiency an important leadership skill, but only 30% are confident their organizations can manage AI and other technology risks. The disconnect raises a difficult question: Could boards’ impatience with AI actually undermine the transformations they’re trying to accelerate?
“Some boards are pushing on unrealistic agendas, meaning their ambition doesn’t match the capability or sometimes even the mission of the organization,” says Jennifer Williams, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice. She observes that boards may be failing to dig in on the question of whether the organization has the resources to deliver on a challenging AI strategy, and “even when they do ask it, they’re often answering at a very surface level, because it’s complex. Capability means talent, it means time, it means focus, and it’s also going to mean money.” Without a clear handle on those constraints, directors risk setting impossible targets—or diverting attention and resources from potentially more promising priorities.
“Part of what makes CEOs really effective is that they have a vision of where an organization can go that makes everyone a little uncomfortable—including boards—and an ability to be optimistic and give the board confidence that they can see something even the market can’t see,” says Jamen Graves, global leader of CEO and enterprise leadership development at Korn Ferry. But AI presents an unusual challenge to that model, says Graves: Even CEOs with bold visions of transformation may struggle to articulate exactly how they’ll get there with regards to AI, because the technology is evolving so fast. “AI is a good example of how uncomfortable that tension can be, because there aren’t many great examples yet of organizations that have leveraged it well,” Graves says. The question, he adds, is what bets CEOs should make today to put their organizations in the best position for a transformation that remains uncertain.
To be sure, unrealistic expectations may be doing more than putting pressure on CEOs: They may also be encouraging companies to make enormous AI investments without the scrutiny they’d apply to other strategic bets. Graves says that CEOs are sometimes applying less scrutiny to AI spending than they would to other major investments: “I’ve seen examples of companies making huge investments in AI where, if they’d taken those tens of millions of dollars and bought a company instead, they would have done a lot more due diligence on that company than what was done on the AI investment.” The danger, he says, is that companies overlook more reliable growth opportunities—or become disillusioned when AI fails to deliver immediate returns.
The questions directors ask of CEOs may therefore need to change. “Many boards are now moving toward tougher, more universal questions: asking about business value, about the competitive risk, about workforce impact, and about governance,” says Scott Atkinson, a senior client partner in both the Global CEO and Board practice and the Technology practice at Korn Ferry. The ultimate goal, of course, is not to just move faster on AI, but to make smarter decisions about where and how it can create lasting business value.
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