Beyond AI Readiness: The Case for Human Readiness
At this year’s Gartner IT Symposium, a theme was clear: AI readiness and human readiness do not match. Organisations are investing in the technology. But achieving real value from your AI investment is not only about the tech. Building human readiness needs to accelerate if we are going to get this right.
Where we are on AI readiness
Gartner predicts by 2026, over 100 million jobs will engage cybernetic teammates (AI colleagues) to contribute to enterprise work. What might this mean for your organisation?
Sarah Daly at the Gartner IT Symposium Gold Coast 2025.
As was clear at this year’s Gartner IT Symposium at the Gold Coast, Australia, artificial intelligence is high on CEO and CIO agendas. Many are poised for investment. Some are already there. Boards are both excited and cautious. Front and centre in discussions were agentic systems. Vendors were explaining possibiliites. Their global examples were certainly interesting. However for many people I spoke with, the path forward isn’t clear. In many cases, the foundations are not yet ready for reliable roll-out into scaleable projects. There is more ‘possibility’ than trusted approach.
For organisations adopting AI, there are some gains showing. Stanford HAI: “78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% the year before. Meanwhile, a growing body of research confirms that AI boosts productivity and, in most cases, helps narrow skill gaps across the workforce.”
This is good. But it is not the whole story.
What isn’t working yet?
Here is the headline from the July 2025 MIT report on GenAI adoption: “Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, the report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return.” For some organisations, what’s holding AI value back is not the power of the models themselves, but how poorly they learn and integrate into workflows. Add to this the lack of memory and the persistence of hallucination, and generative AI struggles to deliver on more complex, sensitive, or risk-based tasks. What stood out in both this report and at the conference: in many use cases, we haven’t sufficiently developed the processes that link technology and people, nor accounted for leading people through this change.
To add to this pressure, AI capability is accelerating at a more rapid pace than human capability.
What about human readiness?
Humans are complex. They have agendas, motivations, behaviours, and unless we understand and manage these, successful adoption is unlikely. Gartner predicts by 2026, over 100 million jobs will engage cybernetic teammates (AI colleagues) to contribute to enterprise work. Yes, you read correctly. This is next year.
This scale of change makes human readiness just as critical as technical readiness. Preparing people in a way that helps them feel psychologically safe, and that includes the right boundaries, will determine whether these human–AI collaborations deliver real value or descend into resistance and confusion.
When you think about human readiness, ask yourself:
Do your employees have the mindset and confidence to engage with AI?
Are there clear decision boundaries on what AI prepares, recommends, or decides? Do these align with existing controls?
Are your leaders creating the conditions for adoption—trust, transparency, and accountability?
Are your ways of working evolving to treat AI as a genuine partner in work?
Most organisations are still early on this journey.
If your honest answer to these questions is “not yet,” you are not alone.
But addressing them is critical. The faster you act, the more long-term value you will capture from your AI investments. Without deliberate attention to human readiness, organisations risk unknown behaviours appearing in human-AI processes. And unknown consequences. This puts the success of your (rather large) tech investment under threat.
Why This Matters Now
The acceleration of AI into everyday work raises the stakes. Organisations who are looking at agentic AI - well - this puts the architecture of the business under real pressure. There are too many unknowns.
Organisations that thrive will be those that invest in AI readiness and human readiness at the right levels for their business. Getting the right balance is where progress lies.
Why AI360?
At AI360 Review, we help organisations cut through the noise by assessing readiness across six critical pillars. This gives leaders a clear picture of where they stand today and where to focus next—whether the gap lies in technology foundations or in the human dimensions of adoption. The result is clarity, and the confidence to invest where it matters most.
To learn more or book a time, send us a note here.