Does the CEO doubt your AI savvy? CIOs must upskill in these 3 critical areas (www.zdnet.com)

Salesforce’s second annual CIO study finds the era of AI experimentation is over — enterprise AI implementations jumped 282% year‑over‑year as CIOs move from pilots to scale. That shift is reshaping the CIO role: 94% say scaling AI is forcing them to expand skills in leadership, storytelling and change management. Key metrics: full implementation rose from 11% to 42%, 61% of CIOs now feel ahead of competitors (up from 43%), AI budgets have nearly doubled with ~30% earmarked for agentic AI, and 96% plan to deploy agentic agents within two years. CIOs are partnering more closely with CEOs and service organizations (65% alignment with customer service) to embed AI into daily workflows. The catch: data trust and governance remain the biggest bottlenecks. CIOs cite data security/privacy and lack of trusted data as primary fears, yet only 35% report closer work with chief data officers, 14% of IT budgets go to data security, and just 23% are confident in built‑in data governance. Cross‑functional integration is weak despite 81% saying agents increase the need to collaborate across HR, finance and sales. Gartner warns multi‑agent systems and agent intermediated B2B will accelerate disruption through 2028, meaning CIOs must couple organizational skills with stronger data infrastructure, vendor integration, and governance to convert scale into value — and to convince CEOs (only 44% view CIOs as “AI‑savvy” today).