The AI Readiness Gap: Why Frontline Managers Are 3x More Worried Than You Are

By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy

There’s a conversation happening in your organization right now that you’re not part of. It’s happening in breakrooms and on Teams chats and in the fifteen minutes before a shift starts. It’s your frontline managers talking about AI—and what they’re saying should concern you.

They’re worried. Not theoretically worried. Not “I read an article” worried. They are three times more concerned about AI readiness than you are, according to DDI’s research on leadership and AI preparedness. Three times.

And you probably don’t know that. Because you’re in the boardroom having a very different conversation—one about adoption timelines and competitive positioning and which tools to invest in next. Both conversations are valid. But only one of them is touching the actual nerve center of your organization’s ability to execute on anything.

The Disconnect That Should Keep You Up at Night

Here’s what’s really happening: while executives are focused on what AI can do, frontline managers are staring down the reality of what it means—for their teams, their roles, and the people they’re responsible for developing.

This isn’t irrational fear. It’s the lived experience of being the person standing between strategic ambition and operational reality, with no playbook for how to lead through what’s coming.

UKG’s research makes this painfully clear: 42% of frontline workers don’t understand how AI could help them, and 51% say their employer hasn’t communicated anything about its impact. Half your workforce has heard nothing from you about one of the most significant shifts in how work gets done. Nothing.

That silence isn’t neutral. It’s loud. And what it’s saying is: you’re on your own.

The organizations that thrive through AI disruption won’t be the ones with the best technology. They’ll be the ones that got the human side right first.

This Is an Energy Problem, Not a Technology Problem

I work with organizations navigating exactly this kind of disconnect, and I can tell you—this is not a training gap. Not primarily. It’s an organizational energy problem.

Everything is energy. Everything is connected. Everything moves in response to everything else. That’s not a motivational poster. It’s the quantum reality of how organizations actually function. When leadership is disconnected from the ground-level experience of its people, the whole system feels it. Trust erodes. Engagement drops. Resistance builds—not because people are opposed to change, but because they’re sensing misalignment between what’s being said at the top and what’s happening in the middle.

Frontline managers are your organizational nervous system. They’re the ones translating strategy into daily action, holding teams together through uncertainty, and absorbing the emotional weight of change they had no hand in designing. When they’re anxious, their teams feel it. When they’re unsupported, performance suffers. When they’re left out of the conversation entirely, they start to disengage—and they take their institutional knowledge with them.

BCG’s global AI at Work survey confirms this: while more than three-quarters of leaders and managers at the top say they use generative AI regularly, adoption among frontline employees has stalled at roughly half. The gap isn’t because frontline people don’t want to use AI. It’s because no one has shown them how it fits into the work they actually do, or helped them understand what it means for the work they care about.

What’s Actually Missing

The standard response to this problem is more training. Roll out an AI literacy program. Build an adoption roadmap. Create a change management plan. And yes, some of that matters. But here’s what most organizations miss entirely:

You can’t solve a purpose problem with a training program.

When people don’t understand why something is changing—when they can’t connect the shift to something meaningful about their role, their contribution, their growth—no amount of technical upskilling will close the gap. You’ll get compliance without commitment, adoption without integration, and a workforce that checks the AI box while quietly doing things the way they always have.

This is exactly where the traditional approach to strategy falls apart. Organizations treat AI adoption as a technology initiative when it’s actually a strategic one. It touches purpose—why do we exist and how does this serve that cause? It touches growth—what capabilities do our people need, and are we building them intentionally? And it touches evolution—how must we change the way we organize, lead, and develop people to stay relevant in this new landscape?

Purpose, Growth, and Evolution. If they’re not in equilibrium, the system wobbles. And right now, most organizations are pushing hard on external growth (AI adoption, automation, efficiency) while ignoring the internal evolution their people need to sustain it.

The Frontline Manager Is Your Canary in the Coal Mine

I see this pattern everywhere. Leadership announces the AI strategy. A task force is formed. Pilots are launched. Metrics are established. And somewhere between the executive presentation and the daily reality of running a team, the whole thing loses coherence.

The frontline manager is the one who absorbs that incoherence. They’re expected to champion tools they barely understand, manage the anxiety of their teams, maintain performance while everything is shifting, and do it all without the strategic context that would make any of it make sense.

That’s not a change management problem. That’s a leadership failure.

And the cost is real. Organizations that treat AI as a top-down technology push while neglecting the human infrastructure see predictable results: only about a quarter of AI initiatives have delivered expected ROI, according to IBM’s research on CEO AI adoption. The bottleneck isn’t the technology. It’s the disconnect between where leadership is and where the rest of the organization actually lives.

What This Requires of You

If you’re a CEO or executive director, here’s what I’d ask you to really think about:

When was the last time you talked to your frontline managers—not about results, but about how they’re experiencing this moment? What are they seeing that you’re not? What are their teams telling them that hasn’t made it to your desk? Where do they feel prepared, and where do they feel abandoned?

Those conversations will tell you more about your AI readiness than any technology assessment ever will.

Because AI readiness isn’t about tools. It’s about whether your organization—the living, breathing, complex adaptive system that it is—has the internal health, clarity, and cohesion to absorb what’s coming and grow through it rather than be fractured by it.

That requires purpose that’s real and felt at every level. Growth that’s intentional and matched by the internal capability to sustain it. Evolution that anticipates what your people need, not just what your market demands. And the discipline to keep those three things in balance when everything is pushing you to move faster.

Your frontline managers already know something is off. The question is whether you’re willing to listen before the gap becomes a canyon.

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Erin Sedor is an executive advisor and strategic performance expert with 30+ years helping organizations build strategy that actually works—from the inside out.