What’s holding your company back on AI? IT capacity
If you just can’t seem to find the time for strategic work these days, you’re far from alone. According to CIO.com’s State of the CIO Survey 2026, more than half of CIOs said staffing and skills shortages took time away from more strategic and innovation-focused work. But here’s the catch: CIOs will be expected to build clear enterprise AI value playbooks with stronger ROI models that show impact across efficiency, growth, and innovation.
You read that right: IT pros are being asked to demonstrate the value of AI while being buried in backlogs that need clearing, users that need help, and systems that need patching. Plus, let’s not forget the endless amount of meetings spent talking about the innovative ideas the organization wants to explore, without any time to actually do it.
In the Spiceworks Community, we recently asked what the biggest time drain is for IT teams right now. The answers should be no surprise. There just aren’t enough hands to get everything done.
Keeping the lights on takes most of the day
No matter what the strategic roadmap looks like, user support and general admin tasks are still the core of the IT function. Password resets, access requests, and “something’s broken” messages all take up a big portion of the IT professionals day. Don’t forget the meetings, compliance work, patching, and updates and it’s really no question why time quickly disappears.
Together, it paints a picture of how IT work is often operational to keep organizations running, which leaves very little time to implement innovative ideas.
AI keeps getting pushed down the list
For all the attention AI gets in industry conversations, it’s not a top priority for many IT professionals right now.
That lack of capacity helps explain one of the clearest takeaways from the Spiceworks Community discussion. AI tools, automation, and AI or ML initiatives simply are not where most IT teams are spending their time right now. It’s not because organizations don’t see the potential in AI, but it’s because they’re being pulled in too many other directions.
This is where the disconnect shows up. Many leadership conversations often assume AI is already in place or at least in motion, while IT teams are still trying to find the time to get started in a strategic way. The result is growing pressure to show progress without the practical ability to deliver it.
AI goals are running into capacity limits
According to IDC, Ranjit Rajan estimates that by 2026, 40% of organizations will miss their AI goals. The reasons are not a lack of ambition. Rajan points instead to implementation complexity, fragmented tools, and poor lifecycle integration.
These challenges emphasize that AI adoption is slower on the ground than many leaders expect. When environments are built on a mix of legacy systems, siloed tools, and manual processes, adding AI doesn’t magically simplify things. It often adds another layer that needs to be integrated, governed, secured, and supported.
Capacity is the real bottleneck
All of these challenges with strategic projects point back to one common denominator: capacity.
CIOs are being asked to prove the value of AI and automation. Boards want ROI. Leadership wants to see progress. But IT professionals are already spending most of their day completing tasks that keep the organization running and they’re starting to feel it.
According to a recent study, more than half of IT workers say they feel overwhelmed by their daily responsibilities and, on average, many are able to handle only about 85% of the tickets they receive each day. That means many teams are starting everyday already behind.
In that environment, it’s no surprise that AI initiatives keep getting pushed down the list. User support, patching, compliance, hardware work, and legacy systems aren’t distractions. They’re the foundation everything else depends on. Until that work is better supported, simplified, or shared, AI will continue to feel like something that should be happening rather than something teams realistically have time to do well.
So maybe the better question isn’t why AI adoption feels slow. It’s whether IT teams are being given the time, resources, and breathing room they need to make it successful.
Where is most of your time going right now, and what would actually help free some of it up? Join the conversation on the Spiceworks Community.
