Executives agree, AI is the technology of the future. That doesn’t mean it guarantees results.
By Gillian Manning
It’s clear: Artificial intelligence is a technology that’ll continue to improve and increase in popularity. Implementing it without an effective plan, however, can exacerbate existing gaps within an organization.
The 2026 Global Learning Transformation Benchmark Survey conducted by NIIT and St. Charles Consulting Group surveyed senior leaders across the globe; 53% of respondents indicated that embedding AI-enabled tools into their company’s workflow was a top priority for the next 12 to 24 months. Despite priorities being aligned, the survey results indicate that “execution gaps are widest in the most strategically important areas, especially AI-enabled learning and skills-based strategies.”
Larry Durham, president of St. Charles Consulting Group, says, “The gap is not intent, but infrastructure. Executive teams are making increasingly consequential workforce and AI decisions without systems that reliably connect skills, learning, and performance. This research gives leaders a clear view of where structural risk is accumulating—and what must be rebuilt to support sustainable growth.”
Other objectives executives point to prioritizing over the next 12 to 24 months include:
- evolving their learning and development strategies (44%);
- building a skills-based talent strategy (41%); and
- and integrating learning with broader HR and talent systems (38%).
As eager as executives may be to address these objectives, they first need to grasp what their organization is capable of taking on in a reasonable amount of time.
Jonathan Eighteen, partner and global head at NIIT says, “The research exposes a structural tension: Organizations know where they need to go, but their systems aren’t built for the speed AI introduces…Without redefining how capability is structured, governed, and evidenced, speed will increase, but advantage will not.”
