The CTO Trap: When Execs Delegate AI , Companies Bleed. With Dawid Naude, CEO Pathfindr .

Australian enterprises burn $28 million annually on AI initiatives. 72% deliver zero ROI. The failures aren’t technical - the models work fine. It’s how executives fund, delegate, and govern them. Most approve budgets, hand execution to IT, then wonder why nothing expands beyond pilots. Dawid Naude , CEO of Pathfindr is seeing the same pattern across organisations: executives approve budgets, delegate to the CTO or the nearest tech vendor, and wonder why pilots stall. We unpacked this and more in . The Simple Tool Test: A logistics client struggled with contract duplication costing A$1M annually → they uploaded financials to Claude (no agents, no enterprise deployment) → spotted patterns human review missed and recovered the full amount. Australian executives skip reasoning tools they already have while waiting for enterprise rollouts. The Practitioner Test: Vetting AI partners is hard when everyone claims expertise → ask one question: “How did you use AI to prepare for this meeting?” → practitioners demonstrate their process; pretenders hand you static slides. For Australian boards under VAISS scrutiny, this separates advisors from frauds and is a huge red flag. Reasoning vs Doing: Don’t confuse chat completion with decision support → reasoning models think through problems; instant models respond → use reasoning models for P&L decisions, instant models for inbox triage. Australian enterprises seeing ROI aren’t deploying agents, they’re using reasoning models to make better strategic calls faster. The Adoption Paradox: AI stalls when the CEO delegates strategy to the CTO → your CTO handles security and compliance, but business model change is yours → if the CEO doesn’t use it, the org won’t. BCG’s 2025 data shows CEO-led AI companies deliver 1.7× revenue growth and 3.6× shareholder return. The Delegation Trap: Under VAISS, boards are accountable for AI governance. You can’t delegate that to IT any more than you can delegate fiduciary duty to finance. If you can’t explain your AI bets, you can’t govern them.

Tonight: Open ChatGPT. Prompt: “Interview me and help me build a 100-day plan for my role.” Connect your calendar. Ask where you’re spending time versus where you should be. If you won’t do this yourself, don’t approve another AI pilot.

---

Listen to the full conversation:

SUBSCRIBE TO APPLIED AI AUSTRALIA All you need to know in one place, specifically for Australian Executives and Organisational leaders. Frameworks you can apply in 48 hours. Podcast: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify ABOUT APPLIED AI AUSTRALIA We specialise in translating AI complexity into strategy that drives business outcomes, Australian executives can act on with confidence. We deliver executable frameworks, board-ready playbooks, and strategy designed for Australian enterprises.