Principal Brad Jayne and Managing Director Peter Thies were interviewed on their recent survey findings in this Fortune article, “Boards say the C-suite owns the AI strategy. The C-suite doesn’t agree.”
A Pearl Meyer survey of 100+ executives and board members reveals a growing disconnect in how companies are managing AI: while 90% of boards believe AI responsibility clearly sits with the C-suite, executives themselves are fragmented on ownership, with accountability spread across senior leaders, business units, and functional heads. This lack of alignment exposes deeper, pre-existing issues within leadership teams.
“Your leaders don’t know how to be a team,” said Principal Brad Jayne. “C-suite teams, they can all perform on their own, but collaborating and actually figuring out how to work effectively as a team isn’t there. So when you see these big changes externally that they have to react to—I think AI just shines a light on something that was already there.”
Compounding the issue, many companies are taking a loosely directed “just start using it” approach to AI without clear ownership or measurable outcomes, even as external pressure mounts to demonstrate efficiency gains.
“The C-suite’s not that concerned about who owns [AI], because a lot of people actually have something to do with it,” said Managing Director Peter Thies. When it comes to data quality, on the other hand, the split runs in the opposite direction, the survey showed. “C-suite, they’re all over that one,” said Thies. “And yet the board doesn’t see how important [data quality] is to the company.”
Ultimately, most executives believe that near-term success depends less on AI itself and more on improving internal processes and cross-functional coordination, which helps explain why many organizations remain stuck in pilot phases rather than scaling AI effectively.
The full Fortune article is available to subscribers.
Learn more about the new study: While AI Is Advancing, Leadership Systems Are Not: Q1 2026 Leadership Quick Poll.