How Should Business Leaders Approach AI Adoption Across Their Organization?
From The Leadership Exchange by This Dot Labs
May 5, 2026 · 26 min
About this episode
Tracy Lee interviews Trude Van Horn about the responsibilities of business leaders in adopting AI across their organizations.
Tracy Lee sits down with seasoned CIO and AI executive Trude Van Horn, SVP & CIO at Cien.ai to unpack what it really takes for organizations to navigate the shift into AI-driven work.Drawing from decades of experience across industries, Trude shares why business leaders can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and how getting hands-on with AI is now a leadership responsibility, not just a technical one. The conversation explores practical ways to start, from creating safe environments for experimentation to empowering “citizen developers” across the organization.They also get into the realities most teams are facing: stalled AI projects, shifting bottlenecks across workflows, rising pressure on mid-level managers, and the growing need for trust, transparency, and guardrails. Along the way, they highlight what actually works, starting small, focusing on measurable outcomes, and bringing the entire organization along for the journey.What you will learn:- Leaders need to actively use and experiment with AI themselves instead of relying only on technical teams- Starting with small, measurable projects helps build confidence and momentum for broader adoption- Faster engineering output…
People in this episode
Host: Tracy Lee
Guest: Trude Van Horn
Topics covered
- AI adoption
- leadership
- organizational change
- experimentation
- trust and transparency
Keywords
- AI
- business leaders
- experimentation
- citizen developers
- change management
- trust
- transparency
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Cien.ai
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