The Real AI Readiness Gap Is Culture

Billions Spent. Little Return.

Over the last two years, companies have invested billions of dollars into AI tools and platforms, but few are seeing measurable improvement.

McKinsey’s latest research shows that only ~5% of organizations are realizing material business value from AI. Meanwhile, Gartner expects global AI spending to reach $1.5 trillion in 2025.

So what’s going wrong?

It’s not that the technology doesn’t work.
It’s that your culture isn’t ready for it.

The Reality: AI Is Spreading from the Bottom Up

Across industries, I’m hearing the same story:
Employees are experimenting with AI to make their jobs easier, creating templates, automating tasks, and brainstorming new ideas.

But leadership teams often don’t know what’s happening, how it’s impacting work, or what boundaries are needed.

That’s not resistance. That’s reality.
AI adoption isn’t top-down anymore — it’s bottom-up.

It’s organic, messy, creative, and full of potential.
The challenge is that most organizations haven’t built the cultural conditions that make that experimentation safe, aligned, and productive.

The Liminal Space We’re In

In anthropology, we talk about liminal moments,  the “in-between” spaces when an old way of being fades before a new one fully takes hold.

That’s exactly where we are with AI right now.
The old ways of working aren’t fully gone, and the new ones aren’t fully formed.

Liminal moments are uncomfortable, but they’re also incredibly fertile. They’re where real transformation happens if you know how to guide people through them.

Without clear values, trust, and communication, this liminal space becomes chaos.
But when leaders define guardrails, normalize experimentation, and celebrate learning, it becomes innovation.

Why Culture Is the Missing Link

You can’t install AI into a culture that doesn’t know how to collaborate, communicate, or course-correct.

AI doesn’t fix broken trust. It magnifies it.
It doesn’t replace clarity or alignment. It depends on them.

That’s why I believe AI readiness is culture readiness.

Organizations that succeed with AI aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones with the clearest values, the strongest trust, and the most adaptable leaders.

How Leaders Can Start

If you’re seeing scattered experimentation and confusion about AI inside your organization, here’s where to start:

1. Reconnect to your values.
Define how your values should guide decisions around AI use.

2. Create psychological safety.
Encourage open conversation about what people are trying and what they’re learning.

3. Make learning visible.
Build simple rituals for sharing success stories and lessons learned.

Those three moves alone begin to turn uncertainty into clarity. 

From Liminal to Leadership

At Culture Grove, I help organizations use their values to guide everyday behavior and decision-making so teams can innovate safely, adapt faster, and reach their goals with less friction.

If you want to learn more about how to create clarity and trust around AI in your organization, let's talk.

Because we don’t need more pilots.

We need cultures that are ready to evolve.

Book a 20-minute AI Culture Risk Check to identify where your team is stuck in the “in-between” and how to move forward with clarity.