The board’s involvement in AI is no longer a distant strategic consideration. As generative AI accelerates the pace of change across industries, future-ready boards have already begun adjusting how they govern, recognizing that traditional oversight models are too slow and reactive for an AI-driven world. Their challenge is no longer whether to engage but how to actively help organizations move faster without losing control, coherence or trust.
Most boards, however, were not designed for this environment. Many are hearing the same advice: add an AI expert, approve a roadmap, get educated on AI, stand up an AI steering committee. But these moves often miss the mark. The boards that fall behind are not the least informed; they are the ones still governing AI as a technology problem rather than a leadership one.
So what does effective board leadership on AI actually look like in practice?
Here are five moves future-ready boards are making to accelerate AI:
1. They focus on leadership, not technology. Boards do not need deep AI expertise, but they do need access to the right perspectives, both in management and in the boardroom. That means ensuring the company has the right mix of “AI Architects,” who build systems, and “AI Shapers,” who embed AI into how the business actually runs. Increasingly, boards will need to assess leaders against the “SHAPE” leadership capabilities ghSMART has identified—strategic agility, human centricity, applied curiosity, performance drive and ethical stewardship—which help predict whether leaders are equipped to lead AI-driven change (and where gaps may limit impact).
2. They shape the conditions for AI leadership to thrive. AI stalls when organizations are optimized for stability rather than learning and agility.
3. They evolve governance cadences to match the pace of AI. Annual planning cycles are poorly suited to rapidly transformative environments. Future-ready boards are adopting faster, more dynamic oversight rhythms that allow leadership teams to pivot, scale or stop AI initiatives before value and trust are compromised.
4. They integrate AI into CEO succession planning. AI is reshaping what it means to be a CEO. Boards that rely on legacy succession criteria, often embedded in traditional CEO scorecards, risk selecting leaders optimized for yesterday’s environment. In our CEO succession work, AI is becoming a more explicit factor in how boards assess CEO readiness and potential. Using SHAPE as a foundation, they clarify which leadership capabilities are now non-negotiable, identify gaps among succession candidates and intentionally develop those capabilities over time.
5. They anchor AI efforts in long-term purpose and values. AI initiatives disconnected from strategy and culture create noise, not durable value. Boards are uniquely positioned to ensure AI reinforces the company’s long-term vision, shapes culture intentionally and sustains stakeholder trust.
The boards staying on their toes are not trying to become technologists. They are doubling down on what only boards can and should do: set direction, shape leadership and ensure the right CEO— today and tomorrow—is equipped to lead in an AI-enabled world. Every board should be asking: “Is our CEO, and our succession pipeline, truly ready for the future, or is leadership our biggest constraint when it comes to AI?”
