AI Is Now Strategy - Here’s How Org Charts Must Change
AI Is Now Strategy - Here’s How Org Charts Must Change
Published on Senior Executive January 22, 2026 by Senior Executive AI Editorial Team
As AI becomes central to competitive strategy, executive teams face a structural reckoning. Insights from members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank reveal how AI councils, Chief AI Officers and other new roles can drive alignment, accountability and measurable business impact - without slowing innovation.
“If AI is mismanaged internally, it can distort the company’s ‘soul’ and corrupt its external message.”
- Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube®
AI as Shared Enterprise Capability, Not a Silo
As AI increasingly shapes how organizations operate and are perceived, ownership itself must be redefined. AI cannot belong to a single function without distorting enterprise coherence.
Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube®, frames this as a brand risk. AI influences internal behavior, which in turn shapes the external narrative. “If AI is mismanaged internally, it can distort the company’s ‘soul’ and corrupt its external message,” Barnard says. Because AI systems amplify these signals at scale, misalignment becomes difficult to correct once it takes hold.
The solution, says Barnard, is to establish AI pods per department, overseen by an AI Orchestrator, to guarantee internal alignment and external consistency. When responsibility is shared and alignment is explicit, AI reinforces enterprise identity. When it is fragmented, it quietly undermines it.
