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What confident tech leaders are doing differently
Tech is evolving. Fast. So fast that it’s exposing gaps in transformation efforts, and senior tech leaders are taking very different approaches to keeping up. PwC’s May 2025 Pulse Survey reveals a clear divide. The most confident tech leaders are prioritizing foundational moves like AI-native architectures and future-ready platforms. Less confident executives? They’re leaning heavily on workforce development — maybe relying too much on people-based fixes when long-term success demands that people and technology evolve together.
What are tech leaders’ biggest roadblocks today?
The pace of technological innovation is tech leaders’ No. 1 barrier to strategy
We haven’t heard a single client say innovation is moving too slowly. And it’s not just development. It’s the pace of adoption. Of implementation. Everyone’s struggling to keep up. We asked technology leaders the top challenges to delivering on their tech strategy — beyond today’s uncertain business environment. The clear frontrunner? The breakneck pace of technological innovation. It was selected as No. 1 by 21% of all respondents and made the top 3 for a full 40% of tech executives.
In fact, the biggest obstacles revolve around people keeping up with technology. Talent or skill shortages and collaborating with tech providers rounded out the list, as organizations struggle to keep up with changing paradigms. Asking whether the team has the skills to harness emerging tools is important. But when it comes to tech transformation, the first question should be whether the right capabilities are in place. That’s because even the best talent can only go so far without the right tech foundation.
Tech leaders say they're confident — but are they?
Just 73% of tech leaders say they feel confident they can build a pipeline for future skills given the current business environment. Those skills become even more important when looking at what aspects of their roles leaders feel they are “very confident” they can deliver. While 60% of CIOs feel very confident they can scale AI across their organizations, only 44% are very confident they can deliver tangible results. Only 41% say that they can increase the ROI on their hybrid or multicloud tech strategies, and just 40% say they’re very confident they can leverage blockchain technology.
Tech leaders are confident they can deliver on business expectations and innovation priorities, but that confidence falls when we ask about specific tech transformations. This reveals a deeper tension. Tech leaders are grappling with real uncertainty — not just about whether their teams have the right skills for future technology, but whether they’ll even know what to do with it.
That’s why business innovation has to encompass both technology and people.
Evolving people with technology builds confidence
Given their concerns with future tech and having a workforce capable of wielding it effectively, we’d expect tech leaders to prioritize initiatives that develop both, ideally at equal pace. In fact, that appears to be true when we look at which transformations tech leaders call a priority. Ninety-five percent are prioritizing employee development (68% say it’s a high priority), 94% are looking to ramp up the development of AI-native ecosystems (58% high) and 81% are prioritizing ways to future-proof their architectures (56% high).
But something interesting happens if we look at the more confident tech leaders.
We split the tech leaders into two groups based on self-reported confidence in their ability to scale AI use cases across the enterprise. The 85% who report being either mostly or very confident are what we refer to as the “more confident” group. The remaining 15% report being either not confident or somewhat confident (“less confident”) in their ability to scale AI.
While 64% of more confident tech leaders say developing those AI-native systems is a high priority, only 17% of less confident tech leaders say the same. More confident leaders are also significantly more likely to make future-proofing their technologies a high priority (61%, compared to 25% of less confident tech leaders) and more likely to increase the use of agentic AI across the business (58% versus 25%). Less confident tech leaders, on the other hand, are more focused on upskilling and development, with 75% ranking it a high priority compared to 67% of the more confident group. The correlation is clear. Tech leaders who empower their people to grow with technology are more likely to unlock the full potential of their investments.
What you can do
- Grow your tech capabilities. Modernization isn’t a one-time project. It’s a continuous process that’s both necessary and expected. Build strategic relationships and take advantage of the full capabilities of your ecosystem. Combine multiple technologies to differentiate yourself in the market.
- Manage transformation risk. The failure rate for digital projects is high and overruns can increase your costs several times over. Take a proactive, strategic approach to managing the risks in both tech and people evolution. This can help build trust and confidence in your transformations.
- Zoom out on program execution. Modernization isn’t just about upgrading systems. It’s about aligning the technology, talent and processes that power transformation. When developed in siloes, each can become a constraint. When advanced together, they build capability.
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Executive takes on 100 days in: What’s next for business
About the survey
Our latest PwC Pulse Survey, fielded May 1 to May 8, 2025, surveyed 678 executives and board members from Fortune 1000 and private companies about the current business environment, the risks executives are facing and their company’s strategic plans and priorities. Of the respondent pool, 85 were CIOs, CTOs and other technology leaders.
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