ANNAPOLIS, Md. – A new survey of 303 senior U.S. business leaders, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Crisis 24, has found “a striking disconnect between how prepared executives believe they are for major disruptions and what the data actually shows about their track record,” according to the company announcement.
Crisis 24 is a global, artificial intelligence-enhanced integrated provider of risk management, intelligence-led security and medical operations, personal protection, medical concierge and crisis consulting.
Every respondent described their organization’s approach to crisis planning as proactive. Every leader said they were confident in their ability to spot emerging risks ahead of competitors. Yet when pressed on specifics, a different picture emerged: 93% admitted their company has missed warning signs of crises or disruptions, with one in four saying it happens frequently or all the time.
Nearly half (48%) agreed that their leadership team is frequently caught off guard by market shifts and external pressures.
The findings point to what Crisis24 is calling a “preparedness paradox”: a gap between boardroom confidence and operational reality that leaves companies exposed, often without realizing it.
“This data should be a wake-up call,” said Sid Kosaraju, President at Crisis24. “Leaders genuinely believe they are ready for crises and disruptions, but when nearly all of them also admit to missing warning signs, that confidence starts to look like a vulnerability in itself. The organizations that will come through the next crisis in the strongest position are the ones willing to challenge their own assumptions about how ready they really are. Putting in place the right structures, processes and tools also enables organizations to better seize opportunities during volatile times.”
What Does the Crisis24/Harris Poll Survey Measure?
The survey quantified the financial impact of missed signals. Every respondent reported that their business had suffered a financial impact from a recent disruption, with more than a quarter (28%) putting the cost at $25 million or more from a single event. The median impact was $2 million.
Senior leaders also estimated that close to half (46%) of their leadership team’s time is spent reacting to immediate crises rather than preparing for future ones. And when asked whether lost market share over the past decade could have been prevented with earlier access to relevant intelligence, 60% said more than a quarter of those losses were avoidable.
Even as companies invest more in planning and intelligence, the preparedness paradox shows confidence is masking risk. Connect with Crisis24 to identify blind spots before they escalate.
The survey was fielded in the first quarter of 2026, before the outbreak of the U.S./Israel-Iran conflict. Even then, the data showed that geopolitical risk was weighing heavily on the C-suite.
How Did U.S./Iran War Affect Crisis Leadership?
Nearly four in five respondents (79%) said that recent geopolitical events had forced their company to rethink its crisis management strategy. Forty-five percent said they felt underprepared for geopolitical instability specifically.
More than a quarter (26%) of leadership teams described their anxiety about global instability’s impact on their business as high or severe, with 81% agreeing that this anxiety has a direct impact on strategic decision-making in their organization.
“These findings were concerning enough earlier in the year,” says Sid Kosaraju, president of Crisis24, in the company announcement. “Since the outbreak of the conflict in the Middle East, the global risk environment has only become more complex. For companies operating internationally, or with supply chains that touch volatile regions, the ability to see disruptions coming is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic necessity.”
The survey identified “a clear tension between the volume of information organizations collect and their ability to act on it,” according to the company announcement. Two-thirds (67%) of leaders agreed that their organization has access to large amounts of data but struggles to convert it into prioritized, actionable insights.
More than half (56%) pointed to a disconnect between the data they collect and their ability to use it for fast strategic decisions during crises.
When asked what prevents their company from detecting crises earlier, the top barriers were information overload (46%), too much noise in the data (43%) and difficulty establishing data credibility or relevance (42%). In addition, 68% cited some form of inability to forecast business disruptions as a barrier, including lack of suitable external solutions, in-house capabilities, and dedicated resources.
Can AI Close the Leadership Crisis Gap?
Despite the challenges, the survey found strong appetite for technology-driven solutions. Eighty-five percent of respondents identified increased use of AI as a top growth opportunity for their company in 2026, well ahead of new product launches (64%), market expansion (56%) and digital transformation (57%).
When asked what would most strengthen their resilience over the next three years, greater use of AI again came first (63%), followed by investment in new technology and analytics (50%) and better forecasting and predictive information (49%).
The demand for early warning capability was near-universal. More than four out of five respondents (82%) said that having advance notice of the next major crisis affecting their business would deliver game-changing or significant strategic value. The majority (57%) said three or six months of lead time would be the most valuable window.
These findings align closely with the capabilities of the Crisis24 AiiA Powered by Palantir platform, which launched earlier this year. Crisis24 AiiA is an anticipatory intelligence tool designed to help leadership teams identify emerging threats and opportunities before they reach the boardroom as surprises.
It sits alongside Crisis24’s established network of intelligence analysts, global operations centers and on-the-ground crisis response capabilities.
“What this survey tells us is that leaders aren’t short on data or on good intentions,” said Ansel Stein, vice president of product evangelism for Crisis24 AiiA, in the company announcement. “What they need is a way to cut through the noise and get to the signals that actually matter, with enough lead time to act. That’s exactly the problem AiiA was built to solve.”
When asked which potential crises they feel most underprepared for, senior leaders pointed to cybersecurity threats (48%), AI-driven misinformation (46%), geopolitical instability (45%) and financial market instability (42%).
The signals they most want to monitor tell a similar story: cyber and digital threats (53%), supply chain vulnerabilities (37%) and financial market movement impacts (35%) topped the list.
