Only 6% of Organisations Are Actually AI-Ready
22 Jun 2026
6%. That is how many organisations are actually ready for what is coming.
That number I took away from the fantastic IMD World Competitiveness Summit in Zürich last week.
The Adecco Group put a figure on something I see constantly. Most companies are investing in AI. Very few are actually ready for it.
So what do those 6% do differently? Not bigger budgets. Not better models. They bring their people with them.
→ They know exactly what their people can do. Skills are mapped and built, not guessed at once a year in a review.
→ They are honest about the change. Everyone hears what is shifting and what it means for their own role. Nobody is asked to move forward in the dark.
→ They move talent on purpose. When a person can add more value somewhere else, they get there quickly, instead of staying where the org chart happened to leave them.
→ They hold leaders responsible for how people experience AI, not only for what it produces. And they let employees shape the new way of working, rather than handing it to them finished.
Notice what is not on that list: none of them talk about the tool itself. That's a given.
Two lines from the summit and the report stayed with me:
Denis Machuel, CEO of the Adecco Group: "Technology will not decide who will win. Leadership will."
Catrin Hinkel, CEO of Microsoft Switzerland: "AI does not replace human judgment. It amplifies it."
The readiness gap does not necessarily show on a dashboard. It can be someone afraid of saying "I do not know how to use this yet".
You cannot close that gap with another licence. You close it by making it safe to learn.
Is your team future-ready?
PS: Thank you for the invite to this inaugural summit IMD World Competitiveness Center. What a great place to exchange ideas.
Why AI readiness is a people problem, not a tech problem
The companies stuck on the wrong side of that 6 percent are rarely short on technology. They have the licences. They ran the pilots. What they are missing is the human groundwork that makes any of it stick.
In the AI work I do with leadership teams, the pattern repeats. The tools arrive faster than the trust does. People are handed a new way of working and quietly decide whether to use it based on one question: is it safe for me to be a beginner here? How leaders build high-trust teams in times of change is the part most AI rollouts skip, and it is the part that decides whether anything changes.
Three things separate the ready from the rest:
→ They make the change legible. People know what is shifting and what it means for their own role, so they are not guessing in the dark.
→ They make learning safe. Saying "I do not know how to use this yet" is treated as normal, not as a confession.
→ They hold leaders accountable for the experience, not only the output. How people feel about AI is treated as a leadership result, because it is.
None of this is soft. It is the difference between a tool that sits unused and a team that actually changes how it works.
If you want a simple way to start, I have a free 5 Tips for Courageous Conversations guide, inspired by the work at IMD. It is a one-page framework for the honest conversations that make it safe for people to learn. Leave your email here and I will send it over: https://www.thechangerepublic.com/free-resources