This article is a summary of what many different senior executives have told me about what they are doing with AI right now.
As we enter July 2026, the state of AI in the executive office is defined by a striking paradox: executives are spending aggressively and taking personal control, yet most remain unable to prove clear financial returns.
Roughly 72% of CEOs now identify as their company’s main AI decision-maker – twice the share from last year (BCG, IBM). 83% of leaders are betting on the deployment of AI agents in full production (Business Wire), even as 56% of firms report no significant financial return and close to 90% report no measurable impact on productivity over three years (Fortune, NBER).
While the macro-level data paints a picture of massive expenditure and structural uncertainty, the dispatches from the front lines tell a more nuanced story.
Over the last month, I have sat down with sixteen CEOs on my podcast to discuss how they are navigating this moment. They aren’t waiting for the ROI data to catch up to the hype. They are moving forward with five specific tactical shifts that redefine the executive’s relationship with technology.
1. Using AI to Make Humans More Empathetic
The most surprising thing I’m hearing: AI is making people more human, not less.
In high-stress service environments like automotive roadside assistance, executives are using AI to give frontline teams the right words in the moment. When a driver is stranded and scared, they need a human voice. AI feeds that voice the empathetic language to use – in real time.
“Using AI to suggest vocabulary that’s going to convey empathy is a way we can make that work… our goal right now isn’t about replacing people. It’s about supporting people in a better way.” – Dan Turner, President and CEO of Xperigo
Are you using AI to make your frontline better at the moments that matter most to your customers?
2. Eliminating “Operational Trash”
Every company carries dead weight: repetitive invoicing, manual reporting, document processing. One CEO calls it “operational trash.”
These tasks drain your best people. AI eliminates them.
“I want you to use AI to take all those things that you do on a day-to-day basis that are just repetitive tasks… It’s like taking out the trash. It’s necessary. It’s not hard to do, but you just don’t want to do it.” – Ross Meglathery, CEO of Integritek
This isn’t about cutting headcount. It’s about returning your people to the work they were hired to do.
3. Using Data to Find What’s Wrong
Most executives use data to confirm what they already believe. The CEOs I’m talking to are doing the opposite.
They’re using AI to interrogate their own strategies – looking for failure modes before those failures show up as losses.
“We would use data to go deeper and deeper and deeper to interrogate these hypotheses for failure modes, as opposed to trying to prove what we were saying was right.” – Matthew Tharp, CEO of Hunter.io
When you stop hiding behind favorable numbers, your whole organization follows.
4. Scaling Without Adding Headcount
The old playbook – throw more people at the problem – is over.
CEOs are using AI to achieve massive output increases without growing their teams proportionally. Faster software implementations. Small teams performing like large ones. Growth that doesn’t break culture.
“We’ve launched an initiative that we call 5X Scaling, which means we want to scale at a 5X rate without burning our people out… we have to scale intelligently.” – Diana Steinhoff, President and CEO of Renaissance
How much of your growth today still depends on adding headcount?
5. Building a Personal Thought Partner
The loneliness at the top is not a myth. You face decisions with incomplete information, and you can’t keep going back to your team with every question.
CEOs are using AI as a 24/7 thought partner – stress-testing pricing models, summarizing complex briefs, querying business data repeatedly without taxing their staff.
“I want you to build out a personal advice board for your role… I personally, because of my AI use just in the last six months, have never felt more productive in my role as a leader.” – Steve Harmon, President of NAI Harmon Group
The Bottom Line
The broad statistics show most companies aren’t seeing ROI yet. The CEOs I talk to aren’t waiting. They’re stripping out the mundane, questioning their own assumptions, and using AI to lead with more clarity.
If you’re not using AI to double your strategic capacity today, you’re falling behind.
I interview senior leaders on AI every week on The Scaling Executive Podcast. If you’re a senior operator ready to share what you’re discovering, come on as a guest. See if we’re a fit.
