McKinsey: Business Leaders Need to Build Their AI Muscle

McKinsey & Company has published a new piece titled "Building the AI muscle of your business leaders," arguing that companies cannot rely on technology deployments alone to capture value from artificial intelligence.

The article's central framing is physical: AI capability, like muscle, develops through sustained exercise. Leaders who do not train their own understanding of the technology risk delegating decisions they are not equipped to evaluate.

McKinsey makes the case at the level of the C-suite and business-unit leadership rather than the data science team. The piece positions executive fluency — the ability of leaders to judge where AI applies, what it can and cannot do, and how to govern it — as a determinant of whether investments pay off.

The argument arrives as corporate AI spending continues to climb and boards press management teams for returns on that spending. McKinsey's own research has repeatedly found a gap between the number of companies piloting AI and the smaller set achieving enterprise-wide impact, and the new piece speaks directly to that shortfall.

The title itself signals the prescription: leaders need deliberate practice, not passive exposure. Reading about AI or approving budgets for it does not build capability; using it, experimenting with it, and making decisions with it does.

For companies, the implication is a governance question as much as a training one. If AI outcomes depend on the strength of the leaders directing them, then leadership development becomes part of AI strategy — and underdeveloped executive capability becomes a measurable risk to returns on AI investment.

McKinsey's piece points toward a practical conclusion: organizations that treat AI as a leadership discipline, not just a technology procurement, are the ones positioned to convert spending into durable advantage.