Signal AI adoption scales faster where CTOs lead rather than CEOs alone

Summary

McKinsey draws on its client work to argue that who leads the AI agenda affects how quickly it spreads. In its experience, adoption speeds up when chief technology officers take the lead, and organizations with that arrangement scale AI faster than those where the chief executive drives it alone. The broader recommendation is that the CEO should work with the finance, technology, and human resources chiefs, treating AI transformation as a shared agenda of the whole top team. This framing places technical leadership at the center while keeping the transformation collective. The claim rests on McKinsey's own observation rather than on survey statistics.