Some argue gen AI’s emergence has rendered “, whether driven by growth opportunities, a pandemic forcing remote work, a recession prioritizing automation efficiencies, and now how , and leading-edge organizations began , including import tariffs, immigration deportations, energy policy changes, and relaxation of other business regulations that will impact supply chains, labor pools, and other global consequences.
Based on those and other criteria, here are three digital transformation practices CIOs might want to increase their focus on in 2025, and three worth replacing with other strategies or practices.
In: Developing transformational leadership and AI-ready employees
One of my of their digital transformation leaders to ensure the right initiatives get priority, vision statements align with business objectives, and teams validate AI model accuracy. CIOs must also drive knowledge management, training, and change management programs to help employees adapt to AI-enabled workflows.
“With the rise of AI agents and excitement among the C-suite to stay ahead of new tech developments, IT leaders will face increased pressure and workloads — and democratizing access to AI and upskilling employees will become a bigger priority than ever,” says Ed Macosky, chief product and technology officer at Boomi. “In 2025, businesses intentional with upskilling will maximize AI benefits with a competitive edge, while those who rush to incorporate AI’s next big thing before their team is ready will be hindered in their efforts to innovate.”
Out: Sponsoring moonshot AI innovations lacking business drivers
How much patience will boards and executives have with ongoing AI experimentation and long-term investments? Gartner recently suggested reports that nearly 70% of respondents said their organization had moved 30% or fewer of their gen AI experiments into production.
“We will see a rise in stories of poor uses of AI, which will cause brands to pump the brakes a bit and revisit their data strategies,” says Bill Bruno, CEO of Celebrus. “Brands struggling to activate AI in meaningful ways because most of their data is unstructured, incomplete, and full of biases due to how digital data has been captured over time on their websites and apps.”
To bring these issues to the forefront of employees’ and managers’ minds, CIOs must explain how issues will impact the business competing in the AI era.
“Dark data, often hidden in emails, spreadsheets, outdated systems, and often a derivative of the main data sources, can include sensitive intellectual property or personal data, making it vulnerable to breaches,” says Nishant Doshi, chief product and development officer at Cyberhaven. “AI tools exacerbate the issue by exposing these data pockets, creating new security risks.”
Out: Lift and shift, app migrations, and dumb automations
A positive outcome of AI is that more business leaders will recognize the importance of transforming operations rather than transitioning existing ways of getting work done with newer and better technology. Hopefully, this will lead more CIOs away from lifting and shifting workloads to the cloud, modernizing applications without improving experiences, and implementing purely robotic process automations instead of more business transformative approaches.
For example, migrating workloads to the cloud doesn’t always reduce costs and often requires some refactoring to improve scalability. Brian Singer, CPO and cofounder of Nobl9, says, “In 2025, organizations will leave behind the mindset of moving everything to the cloud, and as companies double down on reigning in costs, they will start to understand that static workloads may be cheaper to run on-premises. Migrating to the cloud without accounting for nuances of cost and complexity is out, as AI workloads add to operational complexity and are a massive contributor to runaway cloud costs.”
App modernizations that address only technology issues should also be on the way out because using , and shifting to should give CIOs new incentives to drive stronger software development practices and and train them not to click on links from unknown sources, then the new wave of AI threats will require doubling these efforts.
“In 2025, the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated deepfake technology will begin to pose a significant threat to trust in digital content and online interactions,” says Atticus Tysen, CISO and CIO at Intuit. “As deepfakes become more accessible and harder to detect, individuals and organizations will need to develop new strategies for verifying information and ensuring authenticity in the digital age, including educating and promoting awareness for the workforce.”
Mike Arrowsmith, chief trust officer at NinjaOne, says that as AI evolves, it will get even better at data attribution, making it more difficult for organizations to distinguish between real and malicious personas. “In 2025, there will be an increased and renewed focus on IT and AI employee training that educates staff on identifying AI risks to ensure organizations are prepared to address the security gaps AI proliferates.”
Law Floyd, chief of security operations at Telos, adds this third dimension when considering security, safety, and training programs. “Insider threats will continue to be an issue for organizations, and one of the best ways to combat them is through an effective training program.”
Out: Expecting employees will keep up with AI
The fundamental mistake in digital transformation is , I led a panel that discussed how accepting a business-as-usual mindset is a barrier for CIOs to address because of AI’s opportunities to impact productivity. AI capabilities are accelerating the pace of change, leaving many employees behind in adopting new technologies and adapting to AI-enabled workflows.
The pace of change requires organizations to support lifelong learning and go beyond skill-based training to a culture that supports experimentation, teaching, and delivering continuous improvements. CIOs will need to evolve their cultures significantly in 2025 as the impacts of gen AI, political changes, regulations, and culture challenges can either disrupt or accelerate a business’s ability to compete.
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