For the first time in business history, we are witnessing a remarkable shift: regular employees are adopting new AI technology faster than the companies they work for. This is not just another technology that needs a quick fix. Instead, it fundamentally changes how companies adopt new technology. In the past, new technology moved from top leaders down to workers. Now, it moves from everyday workers up to leadership. The center of change has shifted from the boardroom to employee chat channels and personal accounts.
Only 9 percent of companies report being fully prepared culturally for AI integration—a figure that inspires approximately the same confidence as a paper umbrella in a hurricane.
“Individuals—human beings both in and outside of business—are adopting AI quicker than can be embraced at the enterprise level. As leaders, we’ve realized we’ve got a vulnerability here.”
—Toby Boudreaux, Global Vice President of Data Engineering at Publicis Sapient
So how does the C-suite lead change management when adoption speeds have already left organizational readiness in the dust?
As Chief Experience Officer, you occupy a unique position—standing at the crossroads where all paths of the organization eventually meet. Your role isn’t defined by a single function but by a commitment to see connections others miss.
The digital face you present to customers through AI systems isn’t just another technology implementation; it’s the new front door to your entire organization. That chatbot isn’t merely answering questions; it’s forming first impressions, setting expectations, and shaping how people feel about your company.
A clumsy, frustrating bot damages customer trust more effectively than any human agent ever could, while a thoughtful, efficient one creates the sense that your entire organization runs with the same smoothness.
“The role of this CXO is to connect the dots. You have to have a versatile skill set and mindset to understand different requirements, from business strategy to data strategy to marketing strategy and sales... but always keeping the customer in mind.”
—Soulef Khalifeh, Manager of Customer Experience and Innovation Consulting at Publicis Sapient
The greatest customer experiences don’t emerge from a single brilliant mind but from collective commitment to a shared vision.
“The CXO should own the customer’s north star vision—but that only works if every team and stakeholder feels a sense of co-ownership.”
—Bilal Zaidi, Senior Director at Publicis Sapient
This isn’t about imposing your vision but orchestrating its collective creation. When marketing, product, technology, and service teams each see their fingerprints on the experiential vision, it transforms from a departmental mandate into an organizational commitment. This means workshops where diverse teams define the ideal customer experience together, clear principles that guide decisions across departments, and visual tools—like AI-enhanced journey maps—that make abstract concepts tangible for everyone involved.
In the rush toward AI-enhanced experiences, the most essential truth is easily forgotten: Technology is implemented by humans and for humans, and its success depends entirely on human adoption. A CXO’s job is to connect teams, grasp their incentives, and earn their buy-in. That takes time.
The human-centered approach begins with genuine curiosity about how teams operate—their goals, their constraints, their hopes, their fears. It requires aligning incentives so that AI initiatives create value for everyone involved, not just customers. And it demands regular check-ins across teams to maintain unity as projects evolve from concept to reality.
The metrics that guided organizations in the pre-AI era are necessary but insufficient for measuring success in this new landscape. KPIs like time to market, employee productivity, and ROI on creative work have always existed, but now they take on a new significance. AI isn’t just a cool feature; it must connect customer satisfaction with operational efficiency.
Meaningful measurement requires balanced scorecards that capture both traditional business metrics and new AI-specific outcomes, dashboards that show the relationship between customer experience improvements and operational gains, and flexible KPIs that evolve alongside AI capabilities. When metrics remain static while technology transforms, you measure yesterday’s success, not tomorrow’s.
"If AI handles 40% of your tasks, how do you use that time? The answer isn’t just efficiency—it’s rechanneling that energy into high-value, creative work."
—Bilal Zaidi, Senior Director at Publicis Sapient
The executive suite now faces a profound choice: attempt to control a revolution already in progress or become its most thoughtful enablers, creating frameworks that channel its energy rather than contain it.
The C-suite’s value lies both in a decent understanding of AI capabilities (which will continuously evolve beyond any static comprehension) as well as in creating the organizational conditions where both humans and machines can continuously learn together.
What connects all successful AI transformations is humility—the recognition that no leader, regardless of title, fully comprehends the end state toward which we’re collectively evolving. The organizations that thrive won’t be those with the most advanced AI strategies on paper, but those that have reconstructed themselves, in difficult ways, to adapt continuously as AI capabilities expand in directions we cannot yet imagine.
The question isn’t whether your organization will transform—it’s whether that transformation will happen coherently, with intentional guidance from the C-suite, or haphazardly through a thousand unconnected adaptations.
The AI revolution won’t wait for your carefully orchestrated change management plan. It’s already happening, with or without your permission.