Slalom On The AI Leadership Gap Between Confidence And Capability

Feb 8, 2026

Caroline Grant, a senior Slalom leader who helps exec teams turn tech ambition into measurable outcomes, tackles the AI leadership gap. She discusses why CTOs/CDOs now drive AI change, risks of sidelining HR, skills gaps despite new roles, the need for reskilling and human skills like empathy, and how ROI timing and governance shape what actually scales.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Tech Leaders Now Drive AI Transformation

CTOs and CDOs are increasingly leading AI transformations, not HR.
This shift creates blind spots around career paths, incentives, and people strategy.

INSIGHT

The Growing AI Disconnect

There is a growing AI disconnect: executives are confident while workforces feel unprepared.
94% of respondents report workforce challenges in responding to AI transformation.

ADVICE

Form Cross-Functional AI Councils

Create cross-functional AI councils that include legal, finance, HR, and technology.
Use those councils to align people, process, and tech for implementation and adoption.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

What happens when leaders are confident about AI, but the people expected to use it are not ready?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Caroline Grant from Slalom Consulting to explore one of the most persistent tensions in enterprise AI adoption right now. Boards and executives are spending more, moving faster, and expecting returns sooner than ever, yet many organizations are struggling to translate that ambition into outcomes that scale.

Caroline brings fresh insight from Slalom's latest research into how leadership, culture, and workforce readiness are shaping what actually happens next.

We unpack a clear shift in ownership for AI transformation, with CTOs and CDOs increasingly leading organizational redesign rather than HR. That change reflects how deeply AI now cuts across technology, operations, and business models, but it also introduces new risks.

Caroline explains why sidelining people teams can create blind spots around skills, incentives, and trust, especially as roles evolve and uncertainty grows inside the workforce. The result is what Slalom describes as a growing AI disconnect between executive optimism and day-to-day reality.

Despite the noise around job losses, the data tells a more nuanced story. Many organizations are creating new AI-related roles at a pace, yet almost all are facing skills gaps that threaten progress. We talk about why reskilling at scale is now unavoidable, how unclear career paths fuel employee distrust, and why focusing only on technical capability misses the human side of adoption.

Caroline also challenges assumptions about skill priorities, warning that deprioritizing empathy, communication, and change leadership could undermine effective human-AI collaboration.

We also dig into ROI expectations, with most UK executives now expecting returns within two years. Caroline shares why that ambition is achievable, where it breaks down, and why so many organizations remain stuck in pilot mode. From governance and decision rights to culture and leadership behavior, this conversation goes beyond tools and platforms to examine what separates experimentation from fundamental transformation.

As AI becomes a test of leadership as much as technology, how are you closing the gap between vision and execution within your organization, and are you building a workforce that can keep pace with change rather than resist it?