Every executive team I talk to asks me some version of the same two questions: How fast can we deploy AI? Which AI tools should my team have? But they are asking the wrong questions.

A person or organization can purchase a license to an AI solution in moments, but how fast can people adapt? The answer to this question will decide who succeeds in the AI era.

AI tools are changing weekly. A workflow can change overnight. A new model can suddenly perform a task that belonged entirely to a person six months ago.

People do not update like software. They need to understand what changed. They need to practice. They need to develop new judgment. They need guidance on when to trust the technology and when to challenge it. They need clarity on where AI’s autonomy ends and their responsibility begins. Eventually, organizations need to know whether people are actually ready. I do not know of a single organization, large or small, that has infrastructure for that.

As the rate of technology innovation accelerates, so does something I refer to as “readiness debt.”

Anyone who has built software understands technical debt. You move quickly. You take shortcuts. You defer important but non-essential work. You need to build features that weren’t envisioned at the outset.

The product keeps moving forward, but the tech stack starts becoming shaky. Advancements slow and bugs become trickier to fix. The liabilities accumulate and eventually, you must pay them back. In software development this is often referred to as refactoring and, if managed poorly, it can kill an organization.

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