On 20th February 2025, 12 industry leaders gathered at St Pancras Chambers for a unique executive roundtable, where we explored the future of AI, Cybersecurity, and Sustainability in organisations. We think these trends are poised to reshape the business landscape in 2025.

As change consultants, we believe that these areas are not just trends, they’re pivotal triggers for transformation. With businesses constantly striving for growth and sustainability, we gathered leaders to explore their challenges and guide them toward actionable solutions that can be implemented immediately.

Our approach?

We structured the roundtable using the 5x Transformation Model™, allowing execs to:

• Explore the current state,
• Examine these states in more detail,
• Explain strategic solutions by the
• Experts and,
• Execute ideas to take away at the end of the evening.

This model enabled us to dive into real-world experiences, facilitate open discussions on practical challenges, opportunities and collaborative solutions.

Here are our top ten insights from the evening:

1. AI is Driving Efficiency, But Gaps Remain

AI is undeniably transforming business operations, streamlining processes, improving decision-making, and boosting productivity. However, many businesses still struggle to implement AI in a way that balances automation with necessary human oversight.

AI is only as good as the data it’s fed, which means ensuring the quality of input is critical. 

Agile Tip: Introduce “innovation hours” to test and explore AI tools in a structured way. 

2. The Debate: Large vs. Small AI Models

While Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini steal the spotlight, there’s growing interest in smaller, specialised models. These models offer tailored solutions that are often more cost-effective, sustainable, and efficient for specific business needs.

One key takeaway is the future of AI isn’t one-size-fits-all and there are many opportunities to build more specialist solutions such as AI for Law, or AI for Healthcare, AI for Financial Services and so forth.

3. AI Literacy at the Leadership Level is Critical

AI adoption often faces resistance across various business areas in organisations due to misconceptions about ROI and unrealistic expectations. One of the key takeaways this evening? AI education at all levels including leadership is no longer optional. 

Executive teams should invest time in understanding AI’s capabilities and limitations to make informed, strategic decisions.

Agile Tip: Create AI knowledge-sharing communities of practice within your organisation. Business agility creates room for innovation to happen through experiments, this helps you to test and learn in a safe space.

4. AI and Compliance: Learning from Past Regulatory Shifts

Just as GDPR reshaped data privacy practices, AI is on the cusp of facing stricter regulations around governance, transparency, and ethical use. Governments and regulatory bodies worldwide are already drafting policies to ensure AI systems are fair, accountable, and free from bias.

Businesses that rely on AI must proactively establish robust governance frameworks, prioritise explainability, and prepare for compliance requirements before regulations are enforced. Those who wait risk costly penalties, reputational damage, and the challenge of retrofitting compliance measures.

Action: Bring legal and security teams into early product development discussions. Host discoveries with the right stakeholders prior to any lines of code being written.

5. AI’s Impact on Sustainability: Transparency is Key

AI’s role in sustainability is increasing, particularly with renewable energy management and compliance. As we dug deeper into this topic, it became clear that AI’s environmental footprint remains cloudy. 

Companies need better visibility into the energy costs of AI tools so they can make informed decisions about integrating them into their sustainability strategies.

Agile Tip: Data is your friend, capture meaningful metrics to remain one step ahead of others in your industry.

6. AI and Cybersecurity: A Double-Edged Sword

AI is revolutionising cybersecurity by improving fraud detection, predicting threats, and identifying anomalies. But as cybercriminals become increasingly adept at using AI, the challenge lies in staying one step ahead while ensuring that AI-driven cybersecurity tools are effective and ethical.

Takeaway: Security shouldn’t be an afterthought, bring experts into earlier conversations.

7. Cybersecurity Awareness is Still Lagging

Surprisingly, many organisations, except those in highly regulated sectors like finance are not prioritising cybersecurity until an attack happens. Proactive security measures are essential.

Regular training, phishing simulations, and a “shift left” strategy that integrates security early in the development lifecycle are crucial to prevent breaches before they occur. 

Fact: The cost of a security breach far outweighs early investment in protection.

8. Cybersecurity is About People, Not Just Technology

While businesses invest in advanced security tools, human error remains the biggest cybersecurity risk. Many organisations rely on outdated compliance training, but real protection comes from a strong security culture.

Context-driven training, simulated phishing attacks, and clear escalation processes help employees recognise and respond to threats effectively. Leaders must also prioritise their own cybersecurity awareness, as executive teams are prime targets for cybercriminals.

Tip: Embed cybersecurity experts in agile teams for proactive risk mitigation.

9. Sustainability Metrics Need Standardisation

As businesses embrace sustainability, many struggle to measure the impact of their initiatives. The carbon offsetting market is still evolving, and there’s an urgent need for clearer regulations and standardised metrics.

Many businesses rely on carbon offsets to meet sustainability targets, but purchasing credits doesn’t equate to real emissions reduction so the risk of greenwashing remains high.

The focus must shift from compensating for emissions to actively reducing them through energy efficiency, supply chain decarbonisation, and renewable investments. 

Agile Tip: Consider reviewing your end-to-end value chain to identify potential waste points, then implement data capture to monitor and improve performance. Stronger data capture and transparency are essential to ensure sustainability efforts are driving real impact to save our environment. 

10. Executing Now: The Road Ahead for Leaders

Business leaders left the event with immediate actions to:

• Research trends carefully to identify meaningful opportunities rather than chasing hype, and create space for innovation.
• Encourage AI education and experimentation to understand how to enhance efficiency while remaining within ethical and regulatory boundaries.
• Human error is the biggest cybersecurity risk. Building a strong security culture is as important as investing in technology.
• Integrate cybersecurity into business processes from day one for more robust solutions.
• Measure sustainability efforts with tangible metrics to track real progress and trigger improvements.

Final Thoughts

The FormAgility® Executive Roundtable reinforced that AI, cybersecurity, and sustainability are deeply interconnected. For business leaders, understanding and addressing these challenges will be key to shaping the future of their organisations.

But here’s the real test: Execution.

Now is the time for business leaders to take these insights to the boardroom, build actionable plans, and turn strategy into results.

Book a call with us to discuss your needs.

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