University of Kwazulu-Natal

Ceos Are Looking For These Workplace Skills As Corporate Ai Interest

Bonisiwe Shabane
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ceos are looking for these workplace skills as corporate ai interest

Stay ahead with BCG insights on people strategy Manage Subscriptions If the ideal AI talent strategy is a seamless mix of humans, skills, roles, and technology, most companies aren’t there yet. AI is reshaping how work gets done, but not always in the right ways. Too often, it’s deployed as a patch on top of legacy processes—a key reason why value remains elusive for many firms. Workers are already feeling the readiness gap. GenAI will touch most tech jobs, yet many employees say they’re unprepared for the shift.

What’s more, three in four employees expect AI agents to play a bigger role ahead. But only a third of those employees said they have a proper understanding of what AI agents are. Meanwhile, executives are dealing with a gap in AI talent. The DNA of the modern business is shifting; skilled tech professionals are more critical to success than ever. But these experts are scarce: IDC estimates that, by 2026, nine in ten companies worldwide will feel this worker shortage. This is a moment for the CEO to bring balance, collaboration, and foresight to a firm’s people strategy.

“Leaders should be asking: ‘How is AI changing how we deliver on key business outcomes?’” says Vinciane Beauchene, a BCG managing director and partner. “‘Where do humans still make the difference—and what skills do we need to build and reinforce across our workforce?’” While company leaders waver, employees have already gone all-in on AI. A McKinsey research report published in January 2025 explored companies’ AI readiness reveals a startling disconnect: C-suite leaders believe only 4% of their workforce uses generative AI for significant portions of their daily work. The reality? At least 13% of employees—more than triple the executives’ estimates—report regularly using AI tools for more than 30% of their tasks.

This gap suggests more than a simple miscalculation—it points to a critical leadership blind spot that could leave companies exposed as AI dramatically reshapes workplace productivity, workflows and output. Indeed, many executives currently find themselves in one of three vulnerable positions: So what’s the way forward? The framework below offers a practical roadmap for executives ready to develop the AI skills needed to thrive in this constantly shifting landscape. American Express CEO: Employers must tap AI to strengthen college grads, not replace them. If you ask any of my peers leading large global companies about their No.

1 priority, they’ll say that it’s having a future-ready workforce with the right skills and talent to win in a marketplace that is being rapidly transformed by artificial intelligence and other factors. I wholeheartedly agree. But for major employers to meet the moment, we need to create a college-to-corporate pipeline that helps prepare students and all future workers for the sweeping impacts that AI will continue to have on... To be clear, companies need to be balanced and thoughtful in their approach to AI. An American Express survey from August found while 70% of U.S. adults have interacted with a customer service tool powered by generative AI, a majority of respondents were concerned that the process lacked empathy.

Those results support our long-held belief that companies will always need talented colleagues who can ensure that technological innovation is grounded in humanity and connection. At American Express, we began investing in AI in 2010 to support our fraud protection efforts. We’ve continued to expand our use of AI tools in a responsible and intentional way where that can help deliver faster and more personalized service to our customers with the trust and security they... Balance is key. This is why so many CEOs I speak to are focused on building a workforce that has the curiosity, creativity and emotional intelligence to imagine new ways for AI to strengthen their businesses without... It’s a challenge that begins at the entry level, where many companies spend a great deal of time and energy every year hiring recent graduates.

The proliferation of AI is poised to transform the skills needed to reach the corner office, reshaping how leaders approach decision-making, strategy, and organizational dynamics. Aspiring CEOs will need a deep understanding of how to leverage technology to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge. While they won’t need to become experts in programming or algorithms, they must ask the right questions, interpret AI-driven insights, and understand the ethical and strategic implications of its use. Emotional intelligence will become even more critical as automation reshapes the workforce. CEOs must balance technological efficiencies with human considerations, fostering a culture that embraces change, mitigates fears about automation, and supports continuous learning. Visionary thinking will also be essential, as CEOs will need to anticipate AI-driven disruptions and adapt business models accordingly.

Here’s what three experts say about how the rapid advance of AI will transform the skills needed to be a CEO. Their comments have been edited and condensed for clarity. Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair of board and CEO services at Korn Ferry“Staying curious in the virtual dryer of the world that is just tossing us about constantly will be even more important. Innately, it’s easy to narrow our aperture, but what we need is to widen it. Curiosity is what does that. As we get into AI and the ways we can use technology distinctly and uniquely in virtually every industry, the ability to wonder what’s possible and think about how it could be achieved is...

Rick Western, CEO at Kotter“One of the most profound ways AI will affect CEOs and other C-suite leaders is in decision-making. We’re quickly reaching a point where machine learning will make decisions more effectively than humans. So, if you’re aspiring to be a CEO, how do you harness that data? How do you embrace that capability, integrate it into the C-suite, and ensure decisions are grounded in data? The ability to run multiple forecasting models on various scenarios will be key.” The state of AI adoption in the corporate sector

Traits of effective AI upskilling programs Red and green flags of internal AI initiatives AI transformation is an organizational change Technology often advances faster than organizations change. The US government started using typewriters two decades after they were invented. Fax machines didn’t become ubiquitous in American offices until the 1980s, more than 15 years after Xerox released the Long Distance Xerography.

And while Visicalc was providing a game-changing alternative to paper ledgers and mechanical adding machines all the way back in 1979, spreadsheet software didn’t make its way onto job descriptions until the mid-1990s, following... Why Skills Strategy Must Be a CEO Priority Across industries—tech, retail, finance, healthcare—one constant remains: skills are the foundation of competitive advantage. Organizations that fail to strategically invest in upskilling and reskilling risk stagnation, diminished innovation, and the loss of top-performing talent. A robust skills strategy is no longer a human resources function—it is a CEO mandate. The evolving nature of work, driven by accelerated AI adoption, demands that executive leadership embed lifelong learning into the fabric of business strategy.

This ensures that workforce development is a growth lever, not a compliance checkbox. Principles for High-Impact Skills Strategies The most effective enterprise skills strategies integrate three key pillars:

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