Jeremy Korst co-authored the piece with Stefano Puntoni and Prasanna "Sonny" Tambe, both professors at The Wharton School and Faculty Co-Directors of Wharton Human-AI Research.
The authors start from a now-familiar place: most large organizations have crossed the AI commitment threshold, and the question has shifted from whether to when. So why do executives and the managers under them report such different results?
Korst, Puntoni, and Tambe argue the blocker sits in the middle. The managers responsible for making AI work see a different reality than the executives who fund it. Leaders read progress where managers read friction. In the Wharton/GBK research behind the piece, 45 percent of senior leaders report significant ROI from AI; among middle managers, it's 27 percent. That's an 18-point gap on whether the thing is even working.
It maps straight to our Leadership Reality Check: an organization that scores its readiness from the top floor is grading the optimistic version.
So what: Measure the gap between your executives and your managers before you trust any AI-readiness number. The mirror lies.