Hosted by Shaping Cloud

An evening of open conversation.

An intimate dinner for the technology leaders balancing innovation with control.

Register your interest in our February 2027 roundtable

Reflections from our
September roundtable

At the most recent IT Leaders Roundtable in September, Shaping Cloud brought fourteen people together at Corrigan’s, Mayfair, for an open discussion about the realities of AI inside their organisations.

The conversation was candid and unattributed. The strongest theme was clear: AI capability is moving faster than the governance, skills and support models around it. The challenge is not simply adoption, but staying in control.

We came away with practical lessons, fresh perspectives and encouraging feedback. We’re grateful to everyone who contributed so openly - the appetite to keep the conversation going is why we will continue to host these events.

Key takeaways

The commercial reality

Some of the key themes from the September event were around AI readiness, democratisation and control.

Make the compliant path the easy path.
Over-control can be self-defeating. If approved tools and processes are difficult to use, people will find alternatives. Make the compliant route easy, then be rigorous about what data those tools can access.

Treat reliance as the trigger.
The line between a personal productivity tool and a business application isn’t always clear. A practical approach discussed around the table was to treat reliance as the trigger: experiment freely, but once people depend on a tool, it needs to be owned, secured and supported.

Efficiencies are visible. Bankable savings are harder to find.
There were very few examples around the table of savings that could be quantified financially. The productivity benefits of AI are increasingly visible, but translating those benefits into pounds remains difficult.

Today’s usage isn’t tomorrow’s cost.
AI costs are expected to rise, yet there was very little evidence of organisations forecasting what current patterns of use could cost two or three years from now.

More is being asked of IT, without more budget.
Nobody around the table reported an increase in IT budget. Instead, the consistent picture was tighter budgets alongside growing expectations around AI and innovation.