Posted by: Theo Paraskevopoulos
06 August 2025
TLDR:
As AI adoption accelerates, we've found that many organisations lack clear ownership of strategy. Marketing, IT, product and leadership teams are exploring AI in silos, slowing progress and increasing risk. This article examines who should lead AI strategy, the emerging new roles, and why structure, not hierarchy, is the missing link. Drawing on insights from the Financial Times, the New York Times, and The Economist, we outline how digital leaders can align teams, assign accountability and build lasting capability across the organisation.
Why structure, not hierarchy, will define AI leadership success
AI has moved from experimental edge cases into the centre of boardroom conversations. But as adoption grows, a more fundamental question is emerging: who is responsible for shaping, leading and embedding AI strategy?
Ownership of AI has shifted from being a technical question to a strategic one. Is it a continuation of digital transformation, a function of data governance or a new leadership priority altogether? The answer is less about hierarchy and more about structure.
Has your organisation kept pace with AI maturity?
Many organisations have begun deploying AI tools without fully defining who is accountable for their impact. We regularly speak with CMOs, CTOs and digital leads who are navigating AI decisions with no centralised direction. Marketing teams are exploring generative content, IT is focused on governance, product teams want to experiment, and leadership is cautious about risk exposure.
This lack of alignment leads to slow progress. Projects stall, priorities compete, and valuable use cases go unrealised. As The Economist recently pointed out, the barrier is not access to AI; it is knowing what to do with it. Without ownership, AI strategy becomes diffuse and ineffective.
Who is emerging to lead AI strategy?
We are seeing new roles emerge within organisations that understand AI is no longer a back-end function. These emerging roles blend strategy, delivery and oversight:
- AI product leads who link business priorities to technical solutions
- Prompt engineers and language model specialists
- AI ethics officers to manage governance and mitigate bias
- Experience designers focused on generative user journeys
These roles define how AI is used, measured and evolved. As highlighted by the New York Times, organisations are hiring for cross-disciplinary leadership, not just technical implementation.
Why your AI strategy needs structure
An effective AI strategy does not begin with a tool or a platform. It starts with clarity. The organisations that succeed are not those that adopt the most tools, but those that define the most valuable problems to solve. This approach requires mapping AI responsibilities across teams, aligning objectives and creating frameworks that support experimentation while maintaining accountability.
AI does not fit neatly into a centralised or decentralised model. It requires orchestration, which means marketing, technology, data and compliance teams must work from the same playbook. Without shared priorities, AI initiatives stay isolated and under-leveraged.
Build AI capability, not just control
As the Financial Times has pointed out, automation will impact predictable roles. However, strategic, context-driven, and judgment-based work is becoming increasingly important, not less so. AI strategy is not a procurement decision. It is a leadership capability that must be grown internally.
That capability resides in your infrastructure, workflows, and governance models. It shows up in how your content is structured, how your teams are aligned and how your platforms evolve.
How Growcreate helps teams take ownership of AI
Growcreate supports organisations in turning AI from theory into practice. Our work focuses on:
- Strategic discovery to identify where AI delivers value
- Capability mapping to define ownership and accountability
- Auditing CMS and platform readiness
- Aligning teams around shared goals and deliverables
We work as an extension of your team, helping you move from experimentation to structured capability.
AI is a foundational shift that impacts every part of how digital work gets done
Strategy must go beyond adoption. It requires ownership, structure and long-term thinking. The question is not whether your organisation uses AI. The question is, who in your organisation is equipped to lead it?
If your teams are working on AI in isolation or you are still trying to decide where to start, we can help define a path forward.
