Executives fear for their jobs as AI scaling shapes performance evaluations
Executives are also fearing for their jobs as organisations adopt artificial intelligence (AI), but not for the same reasons that have their staff spooked by the technology.
Research worldwide has widely documente that employees, particularly entry-level workers, are concerned that AI adoption will lead to large-scale job losses as automation takes over most of their tasks.
But new research from ADAPTOVATE has shown that AI adoption is also triggering job insecurity in the C-suite for entirely different reasons.
The report, which polled 300 C-suite members of large firms in the United States and Canada, revealed that 83% believe their ability to scale AI already shapes their performance evaluation and job security.
This is 22 percentage points higher than the proportion of executives worried that failure to embed AI within two years could be fatal to the business.
"Executives are nervous for their firms, and more nervous still for themselves," the report read. "Executives are now being evaluated on whether adoption and behaviour change measurably stick throughout the organisation."
Job insecurity rises to C-suite
The findings turn the tables on executives, who have long been reported to be more open to AI adoption while their workforces struggle to adapt amid feelings of job insecurity.
The ADAPTOVATE report shows that executives are also on the receiving end of performance evaluations, particularly on their ability to implement AI across the firm.
The report attributed the 22-percentage-point gap to some executives concluding that an organisation has options that they, as individuals, do not have.
"A company can draw on data, customer relationships, and intellectual property built over the years. An individual has a resume and an open job market crowded with peers making the identical case for themselves," the report read.
"Executives are their own canary in the coal mine. Personal alarm sounds first, every time."
AI execution gap
The job insecurity felt by executives comes as 90% of them are concerned that their most promising AI pilots aren't scaling broadly across the organisation.
Most executives (82%) blamed the slowing progress on internal gatekeepers, such as those who control how AI is implemented, how models are overseen, and how workflows are redesigned.
Executives are also divided on where friction really lies: 57% point to employees struggling with new workflows, while 43% blame managers struggling to implement them.
The report, however, pointed out an execution problem in workplaces, where only 19% of organisations have a company-wide plan to scale what works and 23% leave it to individual business lines.
"The pattern is familiar: organisations launch a pilot, achieve an early result, and then stall," the report read.
"Far fewer have extracted meaningful value from them. The distance between a pilot that runs and a pilot that delivers comes down to whether the organisation has built the surrounding conditions to support it — redesigned operating model and workflows, updated systems and processes, clear metrics, and governance that holds outcomes accountable."
What needs to be done
ADAPTOVATE argues that execution capacity is the "binding constraint" on AI transformation.
According to the report, closing the gap will require ownership that is embedded in functions and developed deliberately, as well as change strategies designed around the existing culture and capability.
ADAPTOVATE stressed that while the conditions for transformation are understood, they remain "downstream concerns" rather than being treated as a primary problem.
"That gap is not a knowledge problem," it read. "The understanding is there; the organisational infrastructure to act on it is not."
It said organisations that treat execution capacity and capability as the primary design problem of AI transformation, and address them from the start, are the ones most likely to close the gap.
"The organisations that close it will be the ones that have decided to build toward execution with the same intention they brought to strategy," the report read.
