IoD and Gallup celebrate successful event "Think your company is ready for AI? How do you know?"

Europe is falling behind in AI adoption compared with APAC and North America. According to Gallup’s Culture of AI Benchmark Report: State of AI Adoption and Culture Readiness in Europe, seven in 10 European company leaders say their employees are not prepared to work with AI and only about half of leaders feel comfortable using AI themselves. But Europe is lagging the rest of the world in AI adoption mainly because of cultural factors, not a lack of capital investment in AI technologies.

Only four in 10 European company leaders  say their company culture is prepared to embrace advanced technologies such as AI, and six in 10 leaders worry that there is something missing in their organisational culture. In the study, Gallup assessed three essential elements of cultural readiness for AI adoption: Systemic Readiness; Leadership Readiness; and Team Readiness. The study revealed that cultural readiness among European companies is sorely lacking across all three elements.

What should organisations do to address this lack of cultural readiness and boost AI adoption? First, leaders need to know more about their organisation, its workforce and culture by gathering targeted feedback from managers and front-line employees. Second, leaders need to say more and communicate more frequently about key cultural elements that will help foster and accelerate AI adoption. Third, organisations need to do more to upskill leaders and managers to enable them to drive adoption and use of AI technologies.

And remember: Even if you go slow on technology, you should go fast on culture.