1 in 2 Indian C-suite leaders admit to AI-era workforce blind spot: LinkedIn

As artificial intelligence becomes central to corporate strategy, India's top executives are confronting a new challenge: preparing their organisations for a future they are struggling to define.

A new LinkedIn study shows that 51% of Indian C-suite leaders acknowledge they have a blind spot around the future roles, skills and capabilities their organisations will need, highlighting a growing disconnect between rapid AI adoption and long-term workforce planning. The concern is most acute among chief marketing officers, with 58% admitting uncertainty over the talent requirements of the AI era.

Can India Inc keep pace with AI without losing sight of future talent needs?

The findings come as companies accelerate AI adoption across business functions. According to the study, 84% of Indian C-suite executives now consider inputs from AI tools a key step in their decision-making process, while nearly four in five say they are under pressure to move faster on AI than they can effectively measure its impact.

The pressure is particularly intense for CMOs (82%) and CTOs (81%), whose functions are at the forefront of AI-driven transformation. Meanwhile, 39% of senior executives say making decisions quickly amid constant uncertainty has emerged as one of their biggest leadership challenges.

For many companies, the challenge is no longer whether to deploy AI, but whether leadership teams can anticipate how it will reshape jobs, capabilities and organisational structures.

"India's C-Suite is entering a more demanding phase of leadership. AI is shortening the shelf life of old playbooks, which means leaders need to navigate this change, make faster decisions and measure success without a clear roadmap, staying open to new evidence," said Kumaresh Pattabiraman, India country manager and vice president, LSS Product, LinkedIn.

He added that the competitive edge will belong to leaders who can "use AI as a sharper input to judgment, bring technology, talent and business teams into the conversation earlier, and spot capability gaps before they become business gaps."

The research also suggests companies are increasingly looking beyond productivity gains from AI. Nearly nine in ten Indian C-suite leaders say innovation is the most important outcome of AI investments, reflecting a shift towards using the technology to create new products, improve customer experiences and unlock new business models.

The changing priorities are also reshaping leadership itself. Millennials now make up 55% of India's C-suite, while traditional career trajectories are becoming less common. The share of leaders with experience in only one industry has fallen from around 80% to 58%, signalling that organisations increasingly value cross-functional and cross-industry experience.

At the same time, four of India's five fastest-growing C-suite skills—including AI Agents, AI Strategy, AI Productivity and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—are AI-related, underscoring that technology fluency is rapidly becoming a boardroom imperative.