CEOs across industries are struggling to translate AI ambitions into real business value, prompting a wave of hiring from executives who have successfully navigated enterprise-scale AI transformations. Sol Consulting has announced the arrival of three former Xerox leaders, including ex-CEO Steve Bandrowczak, to lead its new Sol.Assist program, a flagship service designed to help C-suite executives move AI from experimental projects to operational drivers that generate measurable returns.

Why Are Companies Struggling to Move Beyond AI Pilots?

The challenge facing most enterprises is not a lack of AI tools or investment. Rather, it is the gap between having an AI strategy on paper and executing it in ways that actually change how work gets done. "One of the things challenging many CEOs today is in recognizing or taking full advantage of what AI can do, and they're struggling at the board level, the company level, or with investors to define their AI strategy," Bandrowczak stated. Many organizations have experimented with AI, but getting from experimentation to enterprise-scale results requires more than technology alone.

Steve Miller, the former Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer of Xerox, now leads Sol's AI Acceleration Practice. He emphasized that the problem runs deeper than simply deploying new tools. "Some executives assume that generating an AI ROI is merely a matter of implementing new technology and incentivizing the workforce to use it," Miller explained. "It's not really a tech issue, though; it's a combination of leadership, process, and preparing the underlying data".

What Are the New Expectations for IT Leaders in the AI Era?

The pressure on IT leaders, particularly Chief Information Officers (CIOs), has intensified dramatically. A 2026 Deloitte study surveying more than 660 senior IT executives found that while 79% of IT leaders list driving business outcomes as their top priority, they now face expanded expectations that go far beyond traditional IT management. CIOs must now build AI-ready teams, guide organizational change, and demonstrate fluency in AI and data, all while maintaining system reliability and security.

The disconnect between ambition and capability is stark. While 81% of IT leaders surveyed by Deloitte say they are confident in their organization's ability to deploy and govern AI, 75% also believe their operating models and processes must change within the next 12 to 18 months to drive greater value. This suggests that CIO confidence in AI deployment is outpacing their actual readiness to transform how organizations work.

About 25% of IT leaders named a shortage of skilled talent as a top challenge, though some surveys suggest the concern is even higher. For CIO.com's 2026 State of the CIO survey, 40% of IT leaders identified a lack of in-house talent as their top challenge in implementing AI strategies. Building expert AI teams may be one of the most difficult expectations to meet.

How to Align AI Strategy With Organizational Transformation

• Establish Clear Accountability: Move beyond strategy documents to implementation-focused engagements that tie AI initiatives to measurable business outcomes, such as revenue growth, cost reduction, or capital unlocking.
• Prepare the Foundation: Ensure that leadership alignment, process redesign, and data quality are in place before deploying AI tools, rather than assuming technology alone will drive adoption and results.
• Build Cross-Functional Collaboration: Engage HR, marketing, sales, engineering, and other business units alongside IT leadership to ensure that people and process transformation happens alongside technology deployment.
• Focus on Augmentation Over Replacement: Frame AI as a tool to make employees more valuable rather than to eliminate jobs, which reduces fear and increases genuine adoption rather than compliance theater.
• Measure the Right Metrics: Track velocity, quality, and decision speed rather than tool usage rates or adoption percentages, which often reflect compliance gaming rather than real business impact.

Matt Ausman, CIO at Zebra Technologies, a scanning technology provider, emphasized that the modern CIO role requires more than technical expertise. "One thing I've realized is a CIO today cannot simply be a technologist," Ausman stated. "We must be a pathfinder, tracing a new path in an uncharted field, guided by experience from past technology shifts like the internet and the cloud. We must also be an evangelist and a C-suite advocate, championing the vision and securing the buy-in necessary for true transformation".

Matt Ausman, CIO at Zebra Technologies, a scanning technology provider

Ausman's approach centers on three key priorities: centralizing governance, federating innovation, and measuring value. He stressed that outcomes expected from CIOs cannot be created from IT alone. "The outcomes expected from CIOs cannot be created from IT alone," he noted. "Value creation requires people, process, and technology. The people and process transformation largely comes from within the teams of other C-suite leaders".

What Does the New AI Advisory Model Look Like?

Sol's new Sol.Assist program represents a shift in how consulting firms are approaching enterprise AI. Rather than delivering a strategy deck and moving on, the program is built around implementation accountability and real business results. The service helps organizations identify the highest-value opportunities for AI-driven workflow modernization, develop enterprise AI strategies grounded in measurable outcomes, and execute workforce transformation in a way that sticks.

The program is anchored by executives who have lived through large-scale AI transformations. Shivani Agarwal, also from Xerox, has joined Sol as a director within the AI Acceleration Practice. She brings both commercial and technical expertise and will lead customer engagements, solution development, and AI implementation strategy across the practice.

Jean-Philippe Avelange, CIO at Expereo, a managed networking and cloud provider, observed that the shift in CIO expectations represents a fundamental change in how technology leadership is measured. "In the past, CIOs were measured on systems delivered and IT uptime, but they're now evaluated on how technology enables businesses to make different decisions," Avelange stated. "What is changing is the unit of measure. That repositions the role from running systems to shaping decisions, from cost center to capability builder".

Philippe Avelange, CIO at Expereo, a managed networking and cloud provider

However, Avelange warned against top-down adoption mandates that prioritize speed over genuine transformation. "It is keeping psychological safety intact while the pressure to deploy AI everywhere collides with a very legitimate fear of being replaced," he explained. "Top-down adoption targets like '100% of engineers using AI by Q3' tend to produce compliance gaming more than real outcomes".

Avelange

The hiring of seasoned executives like Bandrowczak and Miller signals that enterprises are moving beyond the hype cycle and seeking guidance from leaders who understand both the technical and organizational dimensions of AI transformation. As boards and investors continue to demand clear AI strategies and measurable returns, the demand for implementation-focused advisory services is likely to grow, particularly among mid-sized and large enterprises that have already invested in AI tools but struggle to extract real value from them.