56% of CEOs Aren’t Seeing ROI From AI. Here’s What They’re Missing

AI represents one of the biggest inflection points of our time – a moment of profound change for business. It promises productivity and efficiency gains, lower costs, better decision-making through data and revenue growth. The promises roll off the tongue with ease, but the integration of AI has the potential to disrupt businesses in ways that we haven’t seen since the pandemic or earlier.  Business leaders know AI is the biggest challenge on their horizon. All top five challenges listed in KPMG Australia’s “Keeping us up all night” survey, related to AI and leaders are prioritising their investment accordingly. This is echoed globally despite more than half (56%) the CEOs surveyed in PWC’s 29th Global CEO Survey seeing neither revenue nor cost benefits from AI investment yet.

As with any inflection point, these changes bring enormous opportunity alongside deep uncertainty for leaders and employees alike. While it’s tempting to view AI purely as a major piece of technology to be implemented, the success of AI integration will depend far more on leadership that creates the conditions for people to think, collaborate, hold each other to account and continue building capability.

Leaders right now are working harder than ever, filling every possible moment of saved by personal AI productivity tools with even more activity. It’s time to pause, and ask: What is actually required of me as a leader right now – and what do my people need in order to deliver? Leaders in this phase need to be visionary, authentic, courageous with a connection to their people if they are to keep their people engaged and optimistic. Findings from the PWC 2025 Workforce Hopes and Fears survey noted “AI does not diminish the need for leadership; it amplifies it, because workers’ willingness to experiment with new tools depends heavily on the trust they place in their managers and executives.” Employees who feel recognised, who can see a career path even if it looks different from the one they imagined, will be more likely to be engaged and optimistic about the future.

Human‑centred leadership is a system design choice 

The world of AI requires leaders to dial up their focus on building trust and create environments where the best thinking happens collectively. When they do, decisions that benefit the organisation as a whole become easier to make.  At an individual leadership level this starts with the leader refocussing their role to ensure they are able to view the whole ecological system of the business rather than being stuck in the doing.

We already know simply layering AI onto existing processes often means missing the very improvements leaders hope the technology will deliver. In the same way, implementing AI without human centred leadership will either damage the business or at best fail to realise the gains that are possible.

Leaders who are focussed on their leadership and the impact they’re having on their people are able to align their teams to work together to deliver as an accountable collective.  When teams are aligned on the strategy and how they’ll actually work together, how decisions are made, what’s prioritised, how they challenge each other much of the noise that surrounds AI integration disappears.

AI is reshaping work at every level. Leaders who engage with their peers and their teams collectively to rebuild processes, roles, and career paths around expanded AI capabilities and employee strengths will be more likely to succeed. In practice this looks like moving beyond personal productivity to engaging cross functional teams to rethink how their work adds value for customers. It also means deliberately building cultures that support experimentation, flexibility, creative thinking, care and connection.

The leaders who ‘win’ won’t be the fastest movers 

AI will keep advancing at unimaginable speed whether leaders are ready or not. Those businesses that succeed and maximise the opportunity this inflection point presents will be led by people who have intentionally adopted a very specific kind of human centred inflection leadership. Leaders who paused long enough to ask the hard questions, rebuilt trust deliberately, and brought their people with them through the uncertainty.

The leaders who thrive in this inflection won’t be those who adopted AI the fastest or automated the most. They’ll be the ones who recognise and acknowledge the value their people bring and the competitive advantage of their organisation culture, both amplifying what AI can achieve.

Written by Chris Power.
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