Chapter 1: The AI 3-3 for CEOs Essential MUST-DO-NOW’s for 2026

The 3 types of Tech CEOs Facing AI

The AI landscape is moving quickly, and CEOs tend to fall into one of three groups based on how they view this shift. Understanding where you stand is the first step before deciding how your company should move forward

1. The Anxious Adopters

These leaders feel pressure from all directions. Competitors are adopting AI, employees are experimenting with it, and customers expect faster results. They worry that waiting too long could leave the company behind, yet they are unsure where to begin or how to implement AI without breaking existing systems.

2. The Skeptical Observers

These CEOs have seen hype cycles rise and fall. They question whether AI will truly transform their business or if it will fade like previous buzzwords. Their caution comes from real concerns such as unclear ROI, unpredictable model behavior, or organizational readiness.

3. The Opportunity Seekers

These CEOs see AI as a strategic advantage. They are early movers who actively test new tools, reshape workflows, and explore how AI can create new value for customers. Their companies often benefit first because they are willing to experiment and iterate.

3 (Three) AI MUST-DO-NOW’s Every Tech CEO Must Address Immediately

Regardless of your category, every CEO must confront three foundational MUST-DO-NOW’s of AI. These principles determine whether your company will compete effectively in 2026.

1. Define AI “First Win” Spots (Start with One Pain Point per Department)

AI becomes overwhelming when leaders attempt to implement it everywhere at once. The right approach is to start with a few, high-impact problem that causes friction for your team or your customers.

• Treat AI as an efficiency engine that can turn slow or broken processes into something dramatically faster and cheaper.
• Aim for transformation, not tweaks. Instead of making a task slightly better, look for ways AI can eliminate most of the steps altogether.
• Spend time brainstorming with your department heads, pressure-testing ideas, and getting their buy-in early. The more aligned they are, the fewer hurdles you will face in execution.

2. Establish the “Data Safety Fence” (Protect Your Crown Jewels)

AI relies entirely on the data it consumes. The biggest risk is employees unknowingly exposing proprietary information by entering it into unsecured tools.

• Your proprietary data is your strongest strategic advantage. Protect it. AI models will not only use it for training but may also expose data publicly if shared with certain consumer focused – hosted models.
• Make sure that all AI being used for internal process improvements or product development is under your corporations license and using API access. Prevent the use of consumer AI subscriptions within the organization for anything that needs internal data access.
• AI models can be confidently wrong, so critical tasks require constant human oversight

Key Considerations for the CEO

3 Immediate Deliverables

1. Issue a clear AI usage policy that defines what company data must never be shared with public tools.
2. Provide employees with a secure, enterprise grade AI system so they do not turn to consumer apps.
3. Begin organizing and cleaning your internal datasets so they can support more advanced AI initiatives.

3. Focus on Human Orchestration (Reskill the Workforce)

AI will not eliminate entire jobs as much as it will remove repetitive tasks within them. Employees must shift from producing output to supervising and refining AI generated work.

Key Considerations for the CEO

• The most valuable skill becomes the ability to define problems clearly, prompt AI to produce optimum outcomes, and evaluate AI outcomes to remove hallucinations.
• Productivity scales need to be re-thought to not only measure outcomes, but also the path taken to achieve the outcome.
• It is absolutely possible that the AI native path takes longer than a traditional path for the immediate few months after you launch this initiative – but you need to persist on the importance of the path if you want true AI transformation to happen within your org.
• Step into the role of your company’s Chief AI Officer—or, if you don’t come from a product or technology background, appoint or promote someone into that role who reports directly to you. This leader must have your full trust and a clear mandate to work horizontally across the organization.

3 Immediate Deliverables

1. Launch company wide AI fluency training covering prompts, tools, and how to identify AI mistakes.
2. Select respected employees across departments to become AI champions who share best practices.
3. Communicate that your strategy is about using AI to compete externally, not replacing your own teams.

An Anecdote to Make You Think… AI is reshaping how we understand the mind.

AI isn’t only reshaping technology and business—it’s also influencing how neuroscientists think about the human mind.

Cognitive scientist Joscha Bach goes even further, proposing the concept of “Cyber Animism,” suggesting that consciousness may emerge from sufficiently complex, self-organizing systems—including artificial ones. This viewpoint forces both AI researchers and neuroscientists to rethink what consciousness fundamentally is.

Together, these ideas suggest that as AI evolves, it may become not just a technological tool but a scientific lens—revealing new insights about how human minds perceive, reason, and create.

Hope you like this article and it spurs discussions that lead us all to learn more and lead our companies better. Stay tuned for Chapter II – where I will delve deeper on Human Orchestration in the Age of AI.

Many thanks to Permira and Brian Ruder for giving me access to their network of CEO’s and gain the insights that prompted this series.