This article part of series on AI and executive leadership, drawn from Riviera Partners’ Future of Tech Leadership 2025 report. The first installment, “Why AI Ambitions Are Outpacing Reality at an Alarming Rate,” explored the brewing readiness crisis. The second, “Revealed: How AI Is Rewriting the Tech Org Chart,” examined how roles like Chief AI Officer are emerging. This piece focuses on what high-readiness companies are doing differently—and why it matters for the long run.
3 Takeaways
- High-readiness companies design for AI from the top down, creating roles and structures that support scale.
- They are 3x more likely to establish Chief AI Officers, centralize hiring, and embed board-level accountability.
- In the long run, readiness is more than preparation—it is a competitive advantage that separates market leaders from laggards.
In a landscape where AI dominates boardroom strategy, most companies remain unprepared to scale. As Riviera Partners’ Future of Tech Leadership 2025 report revealed, just 2% of organizations qualify as structurally “high readiness”.
Yet those few outliers are not simply better aligned today—they are building long-term resilience. Their structural choices suggest readiness isn’t just about being prepared; it’s about being positioned to lead.
Defining High Readiness
Riviera’s Organizational Design Readiness Index evaluates companies across three dimensions: executive role coverage, board involvement, and forward-looking beliefs about organizational design. High-readiness firms are the rare few that score at the top.
What sets them apart?
- AI-specific executive roles: 64% of high-readiness firms have created them, compared to just 21% of low-readiness peers
- Chief AI Officers in place: 72% report having a CAIO, versus 21% of others
- Centralized hiring: 56% centralize hiring decisions, compared to 33% overall
- Board and advisory pipelines: 60% maintain formal pipelines, double the rate of most companies.
These structural moves form a blueprint for scaling AI not as a side project but as a core function.
Readiness as Strategy, Not Insurance
What emerges from the data is a new definition of readiness. It’s not about being prepared “just in case.” It’s about building organizational scaffolding that can absorb rapid change.
High-readiness companies are:
- More adaptive in hiring — implementing more than twice as many hiring and development strategies as low-readiness peers.
- Better at resilience planning — 68% shift hiring to politically stable markets in response to global risk, compared to 43% overall.
- Quicker to reshore roles when tariffs or instability demand it (37% vs. 26%).
Lessons From the Few
Even among early adopters, readiness is not guaranteed. Many companies deploying copilots and AI-native platforms still lack the leadership to scale. But the highest-readiness organizations show a different pattern:
- They don’t just assign AI to overextended CTOs; they carve out leadership roles with explicit ownership.
- They don’t just react to board pressure; they anticipate governance demands by embedding AI into formal advisory structures.
- They don’t just chase talent globally; they balance nearshoring and international hiring with resilience strategies.
Why Readiness Matters Long-Term
The report’s findings suggest readiness today will shape competitive hierarchies tomorrow. High-readiness companies aren’t simply better positioned to execute AI strategies—they are future-proofing themselves against the next wave of disruption.
In the long run, AI organizational readiness is a proxy for agility, resilience, and market leadership. Companies that fail to close the gap may find themselves locked out of the advantages AI offers—efficiency, innovation, and scale—while a small cohort surges ahead.
Next up: The Hidden Weak Spots Blocking Your AI Scale
Explore the Full Report and Benchmark Your Readiness
The Future of Tech Leadership 2025 report includes data from more than 1,000 senior executives on AI, leadership, and organizational design.
Readers can also take the AI Organizational Readiness Quiz to get a custom score, compare their organization to peers, and receive tailored recommendations.
👉 Download the full report and take the readiness quiz to see whether your company is leading—or lagging—in the readiness race.
About Riviera Partners
Riviera Partners is a global executive search firm specializing in technology, product, and design leadership. With over two decades of experience and a proprietary platform that combines deep recruiting expertise with data-driven insights, Riviera is the go-to talent partner for venture capital, private equity, and public companies. Learn more at www.rivierapartners.com.