A new survey of more than 850 global C-suite executives reveals a sharp divide in how leaders judge AI's business value. While 61% of CIOs and other tech leaders said they are confident AI is driving revenue growth, fewer than one-third of CEOs and board members agreed. The report, published Thursday by consulting firm Protiviti in partnership with the University of Oxford, found that the single strongest predictor of confidence was not AI maturity alone, but how aligned the leadership team was on what success looks like.
Organizations further along in their AI transformation reported stronger performance outcomes, yet the alignment gap remained the more powerful lever. Even firms with advanced technical capabilities saw confidence erode when executives held conflicting views of AI's role.
Misaligned success measures undercut ROI
Kim Bozzella, global CIO solutions leader at Protiviti, said the disconnect often stems from leadership teams working from "fundamentally different vantage points." Technical leaders are closer to deployment and can struggle to quantify value in terms the rest of the business recognizes. Meanwhile, CEOs and board members-farther from the operational details-may dismiss early wins that don't map neatly to revenue or margin improvements.
"Even the most purpose-driven technology transformation strategies can struggle to produce results if leadership teams aren't aligned on what success looks like," Bozzella said. That friction shows up in the numbers: just 40% of chief operating officers reported that AI has the potential to be a value creator, a middle ground that reflects the operational uncertainty many organizations face.
The vocabulary gap between tech leaders and the board
AI initiatives often falter not because the technology fails, but because progress gets reported in technical metrics that don't resonate with financial decision-makers. Bozzella noted that productivity gains-a common internal measure-don't automatically translate to business value. A team that reduces a process from days to hours hasn't necessarily delivered a dollar figure the CFO can track, unless the linkage is made explicit.
Companies early in their transformation face an additional headwind: ROI is rarely immediate or easily measurable. When both the timeline and the yardstick are fuzzy, confidence gaps widen. The survey found that firms with shared KPIs, consistent governance, and a timeline tethered to enterprise strategy were far more likely to report confidence across the C-suite.
Bridging the divide with business language
Bozzella advises CIOs to anchor every AI program to enterprise strategy, define measurable KPIs from the start, and communicate progress in business-not technical-terms. "From a CIO perspective, this means anchoring AI programs to enterprise strategy, defining measurable KPIs, and regularly communicating progress in business - not technical - terms to build trust in ROI realization," she said.
That shift in communication can close the confidence gap before it widens. Creating that alignment often begins with a shared decision-making framework. Resources focused on AI for Executives & Strategy can help leadership teams define shared success metrics before they scale AI investments. CEOs and board members, who reported the lowest confidence levels, can also benefit from structured ways to build a common language with their technical counterparts. The AI Learning Path for CEOs is designed to help top executives understand AI's operational and financial levers without getting lost in engineering detail.
Why this matters for executives and strategy
Confidence in AI correlates directly with C-suite alignment on outcomes. The most effective AI strategies aren't the ones with the most advanced models-they're the ones where every executive can name the same three metrics that define success. For leaders shaping AI agendas, that means investing as much energy in defining business KPIs and shared governance as in the technology itself. Without that discipline, even technically sound AI programs will continue to struggle for boardroom credibility.
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