Your AI Budget Was Approved. So Why Is It Stalling?

Your AI initiative has a budget. The project is a "go." Yet, if you're being honest, it feels like you're pushing a boulder uphill. Meetings are poorly attended by senior staff, tough questions go unanswered, and the initial excitement has faded into a sea of competing priorities.

What’s going wrong?

You secured executive approval, but you don't have executive sponsorship. And that difference is the leading indicator of whether your AI investment becomes a competitive advantage or a cautionary tale. Passive approval is the #1 killer of AI transformations.

In fact, a recent aiSTROM study found that roughly 34% of AI projects fail or are abandoned, often due to insufficient leadership commitment. Without strong, active sponsorship, even well-funded initiatives flounder.

As Moderna's CIO Brad Miller noted about their successful, all-in AI adoption, "90% of companies want to do GenAI, but only 10% of them are successful, because they haven't built the mechanisms to transform their workforce." Those mechanisms are built by—and for—people, and they must be championed, modeled, and protected by leadership.

So how do you, as a change leader, turn a passive signatory into an active sponsor? Here’s a simple, three-step guide to onboard your leadership team, based on the principles in my book, Hyperadaptive.

Step 1: Define What “Active Sponsorship” Actually Looks Like (Stage One)

In Stage One, the goal is to lay a solid human foundation. This requires moving your leaders from the sidelines into the game. Active sponsorship isn't a feeling; it's a set of observable behaviors.

Work with your executive team to define their specific commitments. An active sponsor doesn't just sign the checks; they show up to AI council meetings, publicly celebrate small pilot wins, and actively shield the team from the internal politics that can kill innovation. They create what Harvard’s Amy Edmondson calls “psychological safety,” making it clear that thoughtful experimentation is valued, not punished.

Step 2: Get Them to Lead by Example (Stage One)

The most powerful signal an executive can send is using AI themselves. In Stage One, your leaders must model the behavior they want to see. This means sharing their own personal experiences with AI—both successes and struggles—to normalize the learning journey for everyone.

This isn’t just theory. In 2024 they found that 72% of executives now use generative AI tools weekly, up from just 37% the year before. Leaders who actively use GenAI set a powerful precedent: learning is part of leading.

Step 3: Help Them Evolve Their Own Work (Stage Two)

Once the foundation is set, leadership must evolve. In Stage Two, executives must begin applying AI to their own work, not just the work of others. This involves three crucial shifts:

• From Status Updates to Always-On Information: Help them replace time-consuming status meetings with real-time dashboards, shifting them from passive information consumers to active explorers.

• From Opinion-Based to AI-Augmented Decisions: Guide them in using AI to augment their own strategic decisions, democratizing information and shifting authority from position to insight.

• From Directing to Enabling: As AI handles more coordination, leaders must evolve from controllers to coaches. Their primary role becomes removing obstacles so their teams can innovate.

And the urgency is real: According to Gartner, 45% of enterprises were still stuck in pilot mode with GenAI programs as of late 2024. Closing that gap starts at the top.

Getting leadership engagement isn't a "nice-to-have." It's the core mechanism that powers a successful AI transformation. Use these steps to start the conversation and turn your executives into the champions you need.

Learn How to Get Unstuck

Join Karen D. Siers and ICON Agility Services for a practical webinar designed to help you break through the barriers holding your AI efforts back. “Why Your AI Efforts Are Stuck—and What to Do About It” takes place on Wednesday, August 27 at 12:00 PM EST. 

Reserve your spot today—and learn what it takes to go from stuck to scaling.