If you’re a founder, CEO, CRO, or any other leader who doesn’t live and breathe code, the whole AI conversation can feel… intimidating. It’s a whirlwind of acronyms – LLMs, RAG, MLOps – that makes it tempting to just say, “That sounds like a job for the CTO.”
And it’s a massive strategic mistake.
An AI strategy is not an IT strategy. It is a business strategy, powered by technology.
Delegating your company’s AI strategy to the IT department is like asking the person who manages your office wifi to design your entire go-to-market plan. They’re essential and brilliant at what they do, but they don’t have the full business context. The success of your AI initiatives will have far less to do with the elegance of the code and far more to do with how deeply you weave it into your sales process, your marketing engine, and your company culture.
This is a business transformation, a way of thinking transformation, and it has to be led by all the business leaders.
Why the Business Has to Own AI
Here’s why the CEO, COO, CRO, and CHRO need to be in the driver’s seat on this:
- AI Solves Business Problems, Not Tech Problems: The goal of using AI isn’t to have cool tech; it’s to solve expensive, painful business problems. Only the business leaders on the ground truly understand where those problems are.
- AI Is a Change Management Nightmare (If You Let It Be): The biggest hurdle to AI success isn’t technology; it’s adoption. Getting your team to embrace a new way of working is a human challenge, not a technical one. That’s a job for business and people leaders, which is why our background in both People and Engineering is so crucial to making these projects stick.
- AI Doesn’t Stay in Its Lane: An AI tool for the sales team will inevitably impact marketing and customer support. A new automation in finance will touch operations. AI is a cross-functional sport, and it needs a business-led coach to manage the whole field.
Your Job: Be the Translator-in-Chief
As a business leader, your most important role is to be the bridge between the business goals and the tech team.
Your job is to define the “what” and the “why.” (“We are losing deals because our follow-up is too slow. We need to cut our response time in half because it’s killing our conversion rate.”)
Then, you empower your technical team to figure out the “how.”
Ask the right questions: “Will this solution be explainable enough for our compliance team?” or “How does this actually make life easier for our sales reps, not harder?” This ensures the tech serves the business, not the other way around.
Conclusion: You’re the Strategist. Own It.
Don’t let the jargon intimidate you into taking a backseat. You, the business leader, are the one who understands the business. You are the one best equipped to architect an AI strategy that drives real results. An AI strategy is a business strategy. And you are the strategist that can get to 10X Everyone.