AI Leadership Series 2026: what two rooms of UK operators said about AI

Two rooms, one conclusion

aibl ran two invitation-only Leadership Series mornings in 2026. workforceLIVE on 6 May for HR, people and learning leaders. growthLIVE on 10 June for sales, marketing and revenue leaders. Different functions, different rooms, almost no overlap in who attended.

Neither room heard what the other said. Both reached the same conclusion: the constraint on AI value is not the technology.

What is in the report

The five findings both rooms landed on independently, including the one only visible when you read the two events together: shadow AI turned up in both, diagnosed two completely different ways, and both diagnoses are right.

• The three cliffs. Where all five leaders agreed on AI priorities, 79% reported positive ROI. Where only one agreed, fewer than one in three did.
• The capability gap. 72% positive ROI where people are very well equipped, against 32% where they are only somewhat equipped. Tool access does not count as equipped.
• Little AI and Big AI, and why treating AI ownership as one question is why it stalls.
• What Google actually runs on AI, with the numbers, from TK Abdul.
• The training-ground problem. If AI has taken the routine work, nobody in either room could say where juniors now learn the craft.

Who it is for

Written for the person who holds the AI mandate without a delivery team underneath them. CHROs, CMOs, COOs and directors of AI at UK organisations, plus anyone preparing a board conversation about why the investment has not shown up yet.

Contributors include Dr Laura Weis (WPP), Kerri O’Neill (Ipsos), Matt Phelan (The Happiness Index), Tracy Pilon (Microsoft), TK Abdul (Google), Achilleas Kasimidis (GoStudent) and Matt Pahnke (Customer.io).