# The unfinished work of AI: Executive questionnaire 2026

Fielded August 3 to September 8, 2026.

Six screeners and 18 main questions. Answer for the marketing organization and GTM work you know directly. Choose “don’t know” when you cannot answer reliably.

## Screeners

### S1. Where are your company’s headquarters?

Select one.

a. United States
b. Outside the United States (screen out)
c. Don’t know (screen out)

### S2. Where are you personally based?

Select one.

a. United States
b. Outside the United States (screen out)

### S3. What was your company’s annual revenue in its most recently completed financial year?

Select one.

a. Under $50 million (screen out)
b. $50 million to under $250 million
c. $250 million to under $1 billion
d. $1 billion to under $5 billion
e. $5 billion or more
f. Don’t know (screen out)

### S4. Which best describes your company’s primary business?

Select one.

a. Enterprise applications and software
b. Cloud, infrastructure and cybersecurity
c. IT services and technology consulting
d. Other (screen out)

### S5. Which best describes your role?

Select one.

a. CMO or most senior marketing leader
b. SVP or VP of marketing
c. Director or head of a marketing or GTM function
d. Individual contributor (screen out)
e. Other (screen out)

### S6. Which area do you lead, with responsibility for priorities, budgets or operating decisions?

Select one.

a. Overall marketing
b. Product, industry marketing or product management
c. Demand generation, sales development or sales enablement
d. Marketing operations
e. Partner or channel marketing
f. Brand, creative, press or analyst relations
g. None of these (screen out)

## Section 1: Shared expertise

### Q1. How would you describe your marketing organization today in each area?

Select one answer per area. Answer before reviewing the detailed capability questions.

Areas to rate:

1. Turning company knowledge and specialist methods into reusable work
2. Changing AI models or tools without rebuilding the process
3. Equipping approved AI to complete useful marketing work
4. Organizing people and agents to share responsibility

Response scale:

a. Starting: no consistent approach
b. Experimenting: individual teams are trying approaches
c. Repeatable: common work follows a defined approach
d. Established: shared practice with regular improvement
e. Don’t know

### Q2. In the past 90 days, which part of your GTM plan was most often reduced or deferred because your team lacked capacity?

Select one answer.

a. Priority-account research and tailored outreach
b. Industry-specific campaigns and market entry
c. Product launches and sales enablement
d. Partner activation and co-marketing
e. Creative production and asset variants
f. Press, analyst and market-response work
g. No planned work was reduced or deferred for this reason
h. Don’t know

### Q3. Which practices are in place in your marketing organization? Consider work completed in the past 90 days.

Select one stage per practice.

Areas to rate:

1. Named owners maintain source-linked customer, market and product knowledge
2. Specialist methods are documented so another person or agent can repeat them
3. Teams adapt existing open tools or shared skills to solve a recurring task
4. A marketing owner and technical builder jointly maintain a working process

Response scale:

a. Not in place
b. Used in isolated experiments
c. Used across several recurring workflows
d. Standard practice, reviewed regularly
e. Don’t know

### Q4. Think of the most recent proposed AI marketing workflow that did not reach regular use. What was the main reason?

Select one answer.

a. No one could translate the marketing need into a working process
b. No owner had time to build or maintain it
c. Waiting for an incumbent vendor or central IT release
d. Required data or system access was unavailable
e. Quality or business value was not good enough
f. Security, legal or privacy requirements could not be met
g. No workflow has stalled in this way
h. Don’t know

### Q5. How often does your team re-explain company facts, buyer context or brand rules that it has already provided to AI?

Select one answer.

a. Daily
b. Several times a week
c. About once a week
d. Less than weekly
e. Never
f. We do not use AI for this work
g. Don’t know

## Section 2: Adaptable tools

### Q6. Which practices help your team change its marketing technology? Consider work completed in the past 90 days.

Select one stage per practice.

Areas to rate:

1. One owner can see AI spending and overlapping capabilities across the estate
2. Company knowledge and workflow instructions can be reused outside the original tool
3. A replacement model is tested against the same marketing examples before use
4. Individual tools can be changed without rewriting the whole workflow

Response scale:

a. Not in place
b. Used in isolated experiments
c. Used across several recurring workflows
d. Standard practice, reviewed regularly
e. Don’t know

### Q7. What is the biggest constraint created by your current marketing technology estate?

Select one answer.

a. Overlapping AI features without a clear owner
b. Moving information manually between systems
c. Contracts or existing spend delay a better-fit approach
d. Company methods are embedded in tools that are difficult to change
e. Integration and maintenance consume the expected savings
f. Our existing estate meets our current needs
g. Don’t know

### Q8. For your most-used AI marketing workflow, what happened the last time you changed the model or tool provider?

Select one answer.

a. We changed the provider and kept most of the workflow
b. We rebuilt some parts and retained others
c. We had to rebuild most of the workflow
d. We decided not to change because of the required effort
e. We have not considered a provider change
f. We do not have a recurring AI workflow
g. Don’t know

### Q9. Which instruction best describes your current AI investment brief for marketing?

Select one answer.

a. Get more value from the tools already purchased
b. Consolidate overlapping tools and reduce total cost
c. Add a specialist tool for a defined unmet need
d. Build shared capabilities that can use different providers
e. Increase access to the enterprise AI platform
f. No agreed investment brief
g. Don’t know

## Section 3: AI that can act

### Q10. Which best describes marketing’s role in your enterprise AI strategy?

Select one answer.

a. Marketing jointly sets priorities and acceptance criteria
b. Marketing is consulted, but priorities are set elsewhere
c. The strategy mainly serves product or engineering; marketing adapts it
d. Marketing had no meaningful involvement in developing the strategy
e. Marketing has its own strategy, largely separate from enterprise AI
f. There is no agreed enterprise AI strategy
g. Don’t know

### Q11. What can your approved AI environment support today?

Select one stage per practice.

Areas to rate:

1. Marketing teams can use models that pass tests for their actual tasks
2. AI can use current, permissioned account, product and market context
3. AI can work in connected systems within task-specific permissions
4. Quality checks, activity records and an exception owner are built into the workflow

Response scale:

a. Not in place
b. Used in isolated experiments
c. Used across several recurring workflows
d. Standard practice, reviewed regularly
e. Don’t know

### Q12. For a typical account briefing or campaign preparation task, where does your approved AI setup usually stop?

Select one answer.

a. Produces text that a person must check and move into other systems
b. Retrieves approved information but cannot act in work systems
c. Prepares work in connected systems for a person to approve
d. Completes agreed low-risk steps and escalates exceptions
e. We do not use approved AI for these tasks
f. Don’t know

### Q13. What most recently delayed an AI-supported marketing task?

Select one answer.

a. Waiting for an approval that did not distinguish the task’s risk
b. Missing or conflicting company information
c. No permission to use the required model or connected tool
d. Correcting an inaccurate or unsuitable result
e. Coordinating people across tools and handoffs
f. There was no material delay
g. We have not attempted such a task
h. Don’t know

### Q14. In the past 90 days, how often did AI-assisted work require a correction after it reached its intended internal or external audience?

Select one answer.

a. At least weekly
b. About monthly
c. Once or twice
d. Never
e. We do not track corrections after delivery
f. We have not delivered AI-assisted work
g. Don’t know

## Section 4: People & agents

### Q15. Which practices are in place for people and AI agents in marketing?

Select one stage per practice. An agent is AI that can take a sequence of actions to complete work.

Areas to rate:

1. Recurring agent responsibilities have a human owner and clear exception rules
2. Employees practice delegating, checking and improving agent work as part of their role
3. There is a repeatable process to test, provision, update and retire an agent
4. Generalists produce routine creative work using specialist-approved templates and quality criteria

Response scale:

a. Not in place
b. Used in isolated experiments
c. Used across several recurring workflows
d. Standard practice, reviewed regularly
e. Don’t know

### Q16. Which best describes the changes made to your marketing roles in the past 12 months?

Select one answer.

a. Roles and measures of performance changed for people-and-agent work
b. New builder or AI-operations roles were hired or assigned
c. Existing employees received practical workflow training
d. Teams have access to courses or self-directed learning
e. Roles and development plans have not changed
f. Don’t know

### Q17. In the past 12 months, how much additional GTM work has your team supported because of AI, without increasing headcount?

Select one answer.

a. No additional capacity, or less capacity
b. Under 10% more work
c. 10% to under 25% more work
d. 25% to under 50% more work
e. 50% or more work
f. We have not measured or cannot attribute the change
g. Don’t know

### Q18. Which single investment would most increase the GTM work your team can support in the next 12 months?

Select one answer.

a. Maintained company, market and customer knowledge
b. Reusable specialist methods and brand standards
c. A simpler and more adaptable tool estate
d. Task-specific permissions, quality checks and connected systems
e. People who can build and maintain AI-supported workflows
f. Redesigned roles and training for people-and-agent work
g. No additional investment is needed
h. Don’t know