CEOs push their firms to adopt AI, but do they get it themselves?

Some are being nudged to learn how to use the nascent technology at executive retreats through mandatory website-building exercises using AI tools, writes Jordyn Holman from New York

- Jordyn Holman

n March, Andy Katz-Mayfield, a co-founder of the razor brand Harry's, started inviting junior employees to monthly meetings usually reserved for his most senior leaders. The purpose was for lower-level workers to show off how they were using generative artificial intelligence to improve the supply chain, finance and marketing.

But Mr Katz-Mayfield had another purpose, too: getting the top executives comfortable with using AI themselves.

“Building familiarity with these tools opens people's eyes,” said Mr Katz-Mayfield, who is also a chief executive of Harry's parent company, Mammoth Brands. “Through demos and stuff, people are like: ‘Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t think about that, but I now realise why this is important for my team.”

Executives refer to the promise of AI with grandiose comparisons: the dawn of the internet, the Industrial Revolution, Carl Friedrich Gauss's discovery of number theory. But while boards and top executives may mandate using AI to make their businesses more efficient and competitive, many of those leaders haven't fully integrated it into their own workdays.

As with most technological advances, younger people have taken to Al more quickly than their elders. And the work that people do earlier in their careers — inserting data into spreadsheets, creating decks, coming up with designs — also lends itself to playing around with the technology. Top executives, on the other hand, are often several steps removed from the mechanics. Once they're in the C-suite, days are filled with meetings. Less doing, more approving.

So to nudge high-level managers, chief executives who have fully embraced Al are trying new tactics. Some have told senior leaders to use Gemini, Google’s Al assistant, before defaulting to Google search. Some are carving out time at corporate retreats to play around with generative Al tools like Creatify.