by Lisa Lee
Move over, MBAs: AI fluency — and increasingly, data fluency — is essential for today’s CEOs, helping them understand decision velocity, the nature of work, competitive risk, and product development.
Key Takeaways
- To steward AI capital in 2026, CEOs must bridge the gap between financial mastery and technical AI fluency.
- True competitiveness requires redesigning the entire business into an agentic enterprise, not automating isolated tasks for incremental gains.
- Career paths may shift, and boards may rethink succession planning as a result of the new expectations of CEOs.
For decades, the corner office has demanded a specific kind of fluency. Financial expertise, strong profit and loss (P&L) management, and organizational and operational skills have been baseline credentials for a CEO. But in the age of AI, that playbook is getting stale. Now, we’re approaching an inflection point where AI literacy for CEOs is becoming a defining factor for competitiveness and success.
The numbers expose the gap. Less than 6% of CEOs at the world’s largest companies have ever worked in tech. And a 2024 study of thousands of senior executives found that just 8% have “substantial levels of conceptual knowledge” of AI.
Meanwhile, AI agents are redesigning workflows, writing code, creating digital workforces, and redefining how work gets done and who does it. Many executives running big enterprises are placing AI bets while relying on advisors to translate a technology they don’t fully understand.
“We’re already past the point where AI strategy can be delegated,” said Faisal Hoque, founder of the digital and leadership transformation company Shadoka, and an author of multiple business books. “American companies are pouring huge sums into AI. A CEO who can’t articulate how that investment creates value, manages risk, and aligns with strategic purpose isn’t qualified to steward that capital.”
The result is a leadership class equipped for the last era, not this one.
AI literacy for CEOs is becoming part of the leadership toolkit
The next generation of CEOs will need to combine traditional executive skills with deeper technical understanding. It will also need to engage meaningfully with tech leadership on challenges and opportunities.
This doesn’t mean CEOs need to code, but they do need to speak the language of technology fluently enough to ask the right questions, challenge assumptions, guide strategy, and evaluate important technical decisions. The stakes for getting this wrong are sky high.
“We haven’t seen a technology transformation that’s simultaneously the biggest opportunity for growth and the biggest opportunity for negative disruption,” said Bryan Ackermann, head of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry. “We’ve also never seen a technology become ubiquitous this fast while also commoditizing. That’s introducing a level of ambiguity and uncertainty into the mix that most leaders have never seen.”
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Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which says most CEOs are not thinking big enoughabout AI, calls this an “electricity moment.” Factories gained a few hours of productivity when they first switched from gas lamps to light bulbs, but made quantum leaps when they redesigned entire factory floors around electric machines.
Most companies are stuck in the light-bulb phase. “They focus on incremental automation, which is useful but leaves so much potential untapped,” BCG wrote in a recent report. “Often, leaders don’t even ask what new approaches are possible, in part because many lack a strong grasp of what AI can actually do.”
In other words, they should be redesigning the factory, but they can’t redesign what they don’t understand.
For a tech-savvy leader, this means spearheading the agentic enterprise, a shift where AI agents can execute entire business processes across the organization.
How AI is different than everything that came before
Many tech shifts promise to change everything. Most don’t. What makes the promise of AI tangible is that it gives you the chance to redesign your entire business around the abilities of autonomous systems.
That’s why CEOs without at least some technical grounding could face critical blind spots. It’s harder to distinguish true innovation from flashy demos, and easier to miss big opportunities that become apparent only when you understand what’s possible.
Consider what happens when two different types of CEOs learn for example, that AI agents can handle multistep workflows. A technically oriented CEO might ask if agents can reimagine the company’s entire customer onboarding process, while a traditional CEO might focus on important but incremental improvements like resolving support cases faster. The latter approach makes one process slightly more efficient, while the former transforms how work gets done.
This is different from previous tech shifts. Even cloud computing was more manageable for nontechnical leaders. Putting enterprise apps and data in the cloud was an infrastructure decision. IT migrated workloads from expensive on-premise servers to the cloud, and costs dropped. The business model stayed intact.
“Cloud, mobile, and internet were primarily infrastructure plays,” said Hoque. “They changed how you delivered value but didn’t fundamentally alter what decisions got made or who made them. You could adopt cloud without rethinking your org chart.”
AI is taking on roles previously filled by humans, and making decisions that affect customers, employees, and strategy. It touches every function:
- AI sales reps engage prospects 24/7,
- Agents resolve support issues autonomously,
- Supply chains predict disruptions,
- AI writes code and marketing copy,
- Executives use it to help set strategy,
- Product teams generate and test concepts, and
- Agents collaborate to allow entirely new business models we haven’t yet imagined.
A leadership paradox? Tech fluency and human connection
Technical expertise alone won’t make a great CEO. People skills will always matter. AI has created anxiety across workforces that leaders will need to manage: Will I lose my job? Will I get the training I need? How can I stay relevant?
But empathetic leadership without technical fluency can’t address those fears. When a CEO says, “We’ll figure this out together,” but doesn’t understand how AI agents work, what roles they can realistically fill, or what skills will matter in three years, that empathy rings hollow. Workers see right through it.
“Today’s CEOs need to be chief AI orchestrators,” said Hoque. This orchestration is the heartbeat of the agentic enterprise, where a leader can visualize an org chart where human creativity is amplified by digital agents. Setting that vision requires enough technical depth to know which parts of the business are ready for autonomy and which require humans to maintain trust.
“They set a vision for how AI aligns with organizational purpose, make tough resource allocation decisions about which AI initiatives get funding, and personally model the cultural transformation AI requires — including being willing to share their own learning journey and mistakes publicly,” said Hoque.
Look at what great leaders got right during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Ackermann: They checked in on people’s wellbeing, and they acknowledged uncertainty in an authentic way.
AI demands the same authentic acknowledgment of uncertainty, and something COVID didn’t: an understanding of the technology that’s reshaping your business. You can’t lead people through AI transformation if you don’t understand AI transformation.
Ackermann said leaders need to acknowledge the uncertainty head-on. “That’s not to say it’s going to end well for everybody, but when people are straightforward with you, they tend to trust leaders more.”
The next generation of CEOs will need to perform and transform simultaneously. They’ll need to deliver results while steering their workforce through profound uncertainty about their roles, relevance, and future — and do so with technical competence and genuine empathy. One without the other won’t work.
What these new expectations mean for CEOs
This shift is changing how current CEOs operate and may essentially rewire the pipeline of how future leaders are created.
Business schools have already started setting up the next generation of leaders for success in the AI era. As of late 2024, 78% of business schools have integrated AI into their curricula, up from virtually nothing just a few years ago, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. Many of these programs aren’t focused on technical management, but on hands-on experience with systems, data, and development.
The new expectations will affect other aspects of leadership in the AI era.
Career paths may shift. The executive who wants to be CEO won’t just rotate through the traditional finance, sales, and operations path. They’ll be measured at least partly on their ability to operationalize technology. It’s still rare for technology leaders to become CEOs, but more companies — 69% of the Fortune 500 — are placing technology executives at the highest levels of organizational decision-making.
Boards may rethink succession planning. Boards will still rightfully demand solid P&L experience in a CEO, but where they look for it may evolve. A Heidrick & Struggles reportnotes that while the CFO/COO route dominates, there’s a growing preference for leaders with cross-functional mobility, such as those with experience in tech transformation, as long as they’ve also had revenue responsibility.
“You have to have sustained operational performance and you have to be able to transform the organization to keep pace with change,” said Ackermann. “That change just keeps increasing and getting multidimensional. The good boards are on top of that.”
And perhaps most significantly, the definition of CEO competency may evolve. CEOs have always been responsible for the company’s performance. Now, they’ll need to perform andtransform. In the AI era, CEOs need to evaluate an AI strategy, assess technical capabilities, and lead organizations through technological reinvention and workplace disruption, all at an unprecedented pace.
AI literacy for CEOs: A 21st-century imperative
The luxury of treating technology as a delegated back-office function is long gone; instead, it’s a strategic lever — and possibly the most important one. The leaders who define the next decade will be bilingual CEOs who can speak both P&L and tech.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which says most CEOs are not thinking big enoughabout AI, calls this an “electricity moment.” Factories gained a few hours of productivity when they first switched from gas lamps to light bulbs, but made quantum leaps when they redesigned entire factory floors around electric machines.
Most companies are stuck in the light-bulb phase. “They focus on incremental automation, which is useful but leaves so much potential untapped,” BCG wrote in a recent report. “Often, leaders don’t even ask what new approaches are possible, in part because many lack a strong grasp of what AI can actually do.”
In other words, they should be redesigning the factory, but they can’t redesign what they don’t understand.
For a tech-savvy leader, this means spearheading the agentic enterprise, a shift where AI agents can execute entire business processes across the organization.
How AI is different than everything that came before
Many tech shifts promise to change everything. Most don’t. What makes the promise of AI tangible is that it gives you the chance to redesign your entire business around the abilities of autonomous systems.
That’s why CEOs without at least some technical grounding could face critical blind spots. It’s harder to distinguish true innovation from flashy demos, and easier to miss big opportunities that become apparent only when you understand what’s possible.
Consider what happens when two different types of CEOs learn for example, that AI agents can handle multistep workflows. A technically oriented CEO might ask if agents can reimagine the company’s entire customer onboarding process, while a traditional CEO might focus on important but incremental improvements like resolving support cases faster. The latter approach makes one process slightly more efficient, while the former transforms how work gets done.
This is different from previous tech shifts. Even cloud computing was more manageable for nontechnical leaders. Putting enterprise apps and data in the cloud was an infrastructure decision. IT migrated workloads from expensive on-premise servers to the cloud, and costs dropped. The business model stayed intact.
“Cloud, mobile, and internet were primarily infrastructure plays,” said Hoque. “They changed how you delivered value but didn’t fundamentally alter what decisions got made or who made them. You could adopt cloud without rethinking your org chart.”
AI is taking on roles previously filled by humans, and making decisions that affect customers, employees, and strategy. It touches every function:
- AI sales reps engage prospects 24/7,
- Agents resolve support issues autonomously,
- Supply chains predict disruptions,
- AI writes code and marketing copy,
- Executives use it to help set strategy,
- Product teams generate and test concepts, and
- Agents collaborate to allow entirely new business models we haven’t yet imagined.
A leadership paradox? Tech fluency and human connection
Technical expertise alone won’t make a great CEO. People skills will always matter. AI has created anxiety across workforces that leaders will need to manage: Will I lose my job? Will I get the training I need? How can I stay relevant?
But empathetic leadership without technical fluency can’t address those fears. When a CEO says, “We’ll figure this out together,” but doesn’t understand how AI agents work, what roles they can realistically fill, or what skills will matter in three years, that empathy rings hollow. Workers see right through it.
“Today’s CEOs need to be chief AI orchestrators,” said Hoque. This orchestration is the heartbeat of the agentic enterprise, where a leader can visualize an org chart where human creativity is amplified by digital agents. Setting that vision requires enough technical depth to know which parts of the business are ready for autonomy and which require humans to maintain trust.
“They set a vision for how AI aligns with organizational purpose, make tough resource allocation decisions about which AI initiatives get funding, and personally model the cultural transformation AI requires — including being willing to share their own learning journey and mistakes publicly,” said Hoque.
Look at what great leaders got right during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Ackermann: They checked in on people’s wellbeing, and they acknowledged uncertainty in an authentic way.
AI demands the same authentic acknowledgment of uncertainty, and something COVID didn’t: an understanding of the technology that’s reshaping your business. You can’t lead people through AI transformation if you don’t understand AI transformation.
Ackermann said leaders need to acknowledge the uncertainty head-on. “That’s not to say it’s going to end well for everybody, but when people are straightforward with you, they tend to trust leaders more.”
The next generation of CEOs will need to perform and transform simultaneously. They’ll need to deliver results while steering their workforce through profound uncertainty about their roles, relevance, and future — and do so with technical competence and genuine empathy. One without the other won’t work.
What these new expectations mean for CEOs
This shift is changing how current CEOs operate and may essentially rewire the pipeline of how future leaders are created.
Business schools have already started setting up the next generation of leaders for success in the AI era. As of late 2024, 78% of business schools have integrated AI into their curricula, up from virtually nothing just a few years ago, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. Many of these programs aren’t focused on technical management, but on hands-on experience with systems, data, and development.
The new expectations will affect other aspects of leadership in the AI era.
Career paths may shift. The executive who wants to be CEO won’t just rotate through the traditional finance, sales, and operations path. They’ll be measured at least partly on their ability to operationalize technology. It’s still rare for technology leaders to become CEOs, but more companies — 69% of the Fortune 500 — are placing technology executives at the highest levels of organizational decision-making.
Boards may rethink succession planning. Boards will still rightfully demand solid P&L experience in a CEO, but where they look for it may evolve. A Heidrick & Struggles reportnotes that while the CFO/COO route dominates, there’s a growing preference for leaders with cross-functional mobility, such as those with experience in tech transformation, as long as they’ve also had revenue responsibility.
“You have to have sustained operational performance and you have to be able to transform the organization to keep pace with change,” said Ackermann. “That change just keeps increasing and getting multidimensional. The good boards are on top of that.”
And perhaps most significantly, the definition of CEO competency may evolve. CEOs have always been responsible for the company’s performance. Now, they’ll need to perform andtransform. In the AI era, CEOs need to evaluate an AI strategy, assess technical capabilities, and lead organizations through technological reinvention and workplace disruption, all at an unprecedented pace.
AI literacy for CEOs: A 21st-century imperative
The luxury of treating technology as a delegated back-office function is long gone; instead, it’s a strategic lever — and possibly the most important one. The leaders who define the next decade will be bilingual CEOs who can speak both P&L and tech.
[Image credit: Aleona Pollauf/Salesforce]
Original article @ Salesforce.com.
