CXO Voice · Contributed
Why We Stopped Treating AI as an IT Project
When AI sat inside IT, it stayed a science experiment. Moving ownership to the business is what finally changed the numbers.
For two years, our AI work lived inside IT. It was well run and went nowhere. Every initiative was framed as a technology capability to be demonstrated, not a business decision to be made.
The shift that mattered was not a new model or a bigger budget. It was moving accountability for each AI initiative to the business leader who owned the outcome it was meant to change.
The effect was immediate. Suddenly the questions changed. Instead of "can we do this," people asked "is this worth doing." Most of the portfolio did not survive that question — and that was the point.
IT still builds and governs. But it no longer owns the decision about whether a given business should adopt AI. That decision belongs to the person who will live with the result.
If your AI program is stalled, I would look less at your technology and more at where accountability sits. Ours was in the wrong place.
“The shift that mattered was not a new model. It was moving accountability to the leader who owned the outcome.”Priya Nair — CIO, Meridian Bank
Disclosure
The author is CIO of Meridian Bank. This perspective reflects her own views and was reviewed by CXOROOM editors for accuracy and disclosure. No AI system authored this article.
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