Tara Balakrishnan
McKinsey commentary
Associate partner
What stands out most about the high performers is their level of ambition. Their AI agendas go beyond driving incremental efficiency gains: High performers are setting out to fundamentally reimagine their businesses. This level of ambition becomes a key differentiator and catalyst for change in the organization. When leaders articulate a transformative vision for AI, we see that it galvanizes the organization in terms of alignment, investment, and overall energy. As a result, leading organizations are not just seeing improved automation results; they are redesigning workflows and customer experiences to capture new forms of value.
Often, organizations approach AI through a cost-first mindset. While many see leading indicators from efficiency gains, focusing only on cost can limit AI’s impact. Positioning AI as an enabler of growth and innovation creates space within the organization to go after the cost and efficiency improvements more effectively. And for many organizations, an efficiency play will not be sufficient to navigate AI disruption. They will need to consider how AI can be leveraged to tell a transformational story to their stakeholders. Doing so also supports change management internally. Employees tend to rally behind a shared vision of opportunity. In our experience, many of the organizations that use AI to inspire growth and innovation are the same ones that find it easier to scale AI use and ultimately realize sustainable productivity improvements.