What language has been most effective for helping non-technical leaders understand the true cost of delaying foundational IT work to instead focus on AI implementation? Can you share an example?

If we don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will we have time to do it right? Delaying foundation IT work will cause financial, reputational, compliance and operational risk. Does company has appetite to take this risk?

Delaying foundational work can be risky and costly and delay the delivery of business value. Work needs to be prioritized. We work with and educate our product owners on security issues, compliance issues and upgrades that cannot wait and will delay moving foward in the long run if AI or other work is prioritized over it. Product Owners can help the rest of the business team members make the right decision

It all depends on risk and value. If AI implementation has dependency on foundational IT (Infra or technology or application) and that stack is at risk of collapsing or out of support or compliance risk, that needs to be communicated in business language. Fixing that first irrespective of AI as it is key to sustain. End of the day what is must to do and can be delayed with right justification. It is always challenging, and very thin line runs across. Hope the below will help.

The most effective language for helping non-technical leaders understand the **true cost of delaying foundational IT work** in favor of AI implementation is often **financial and risk-oriented storytelling**, framed in terms of **business outcomes** rather than technical jargon.

Most Effective Language:
1. **Opportunity Cost Framing**:
- “By prioritizing AI without modernizing our data infrastructure, we risk spending millions on models that produce unreliable insights.”
- “Delaying foundational IT work is like building a skyscraper on sand—AI initiatives will collapse under the weight of poor data quality and system fragility.”

2. **Risk-Based Language**:
- “Without foundational upgrades, we increase the risk of data breaches, compliance failures, and operational downtime—all of which carry significant financial and reputational costs.”

3. **ROI and Time-to-Value Comparisons**:
- “Foundational IT investments may not be flashy, but they enable AI to deliver real ROI faster and more reliably. Skipping them delays value realization.”

I haven’t faced this directly yet, but any discussion about delaying foundational IT work, especially cybersecurity, requires careful planning. For executives, it’s about time, money, and risk. I frame discussions in terms of revenue, cost, and risk, as these are the board’s primary concerns.

We’ve approached these conversations directly, using standard business case language to highlight benefits and prioritize work. Differentiating between AI hype and reality has helped our executive team make informed decisions.