You gave your employees access and permission to use various AI tools .
You rolled out AI guidance. You ran training sessions on how to use AI tools.
Fast forward many months and you are not seeing either the improved productivity or innovation developments you hoped for. Why? AI literacy was missing from your implementation.
What is AI Literacy?
Being AI literate means that you go beyond just using AI tools, it means you have developed the ability to be able to evaluate and then use those tools effectively.
Why is this so crucial for leaders? It enables you to make informed decisions about if and how to adopt certain tools, platforms or ecosystems and sets your business up for sustainable success.
What being an AI literate leader looks like in practice
- You go beyond knowing the tools to understanding AI is now infrastructure
- You horizon scan and constantly assess how new developments will impact your business and employees
- You know when to and not to use AI in your context
- You consider sustainability, cost, change management and reputation management when integrating AI use into your operations
Why is AI literacy so important?
AI has moved beyond being a ‘tool’ to an infrastructure involving all levels of business operations, from organisational strategy to recruitment to product innovation. Physical AI – use of drones, robotics and autonomous vehicles is on the rise too.
The 2026 Deloitte report on AI use, revealed that companies they surveyed increased worker access to AI by 50% in just one year—growing from fewer than 40% to around 60% of workers with sanctioned AI tools.
But they note “among those workers with access, fewer than 60% use it in their daily workflow—a pattern that remains largely unchanged from last year.” Deloitte concludes AI remains underutilised. Becoming an AI literate leader will help you release potential productivity and innovation gains.
As a leader becoming AI literate is necessary to:
- Ensure legal compliance (e.g. EU AI act)
- Maintain your company’s competitive edge
- Mitigate for the risk of shadow AI use and agents to your company
- Reduce the risk of decisions and actions being automated or inappropriately outsourced to AI
- Evaluate AI vendors and know when to buy and when to build your own
- Move beyond AI training to redesigning roles and organisational structure to future proof your business
- Design alternative career paths for entry level (and other) employees so they can still progress as AI handles lower level tasks
- Analyse AI-driven insights
AI Literacy is essential in order for you to develop a roadmap for successful long term AI adoption for your company. Building up a high level of AI literacy will enable you to move beyond pilots and surface level roll outs and stop jumping from one shiny AI tool to another without harnessing any of the benefits of AI in the longer term.
Where do I start?
In order to begin your AI literacy journey you need to honestly assess where you and your business currently stand.
Where would you place yourself and your business in the below matrix?
Becoming AI literate is not about doing a single course
AI is rapidly evolving. Taking a short leadership AI literacy course is a good idea to get started, learn the basics and discover where your knowledge gaps are but you should not stop there!
You need to continuously update your knowledge so you can ensure that you, your business and employees will continue to thrive in an AI world.
How?
- Research and follow people that provide high quality insights regarding AI developments in your industry
- Use AI tools to automatically curate relevant blogs or articles regarding AI literacy – use AI tools to provide you with key insights that you dig into more deeply
- Sign up to relevant industry AI newsletters or journals
- Have conversations with your employees and get their feedback to inform continuous improvement
- Understand what culture and context you are working within to shape your AI literacy strategy
- Create proof of concepts then test and scale
- Start a community of practice, practice using AI tools together, share lessons learned
Take your first step!
Becoming AI literate is a continuous process not a one time effort.
What one thing will you do today to start your AI literacy journey?
