Systems of record are designed for storage, compliance, and reporting. Systems of work are where decisions actually happen: email threads, chat channels, spreadsheets, and hallway conversations. AI readiness depends on understanding both.
When leaders only look at systems of record, they assume the workflow is clean. The moment you observe the work, you see the truth: duplicate entries, manual overrides, and shadow systems that carry the real context. This is why AI initiatives stall — the model is trained on formal data while decisions live elsewhere.
The solution is not to eliminate informal work. It is to acknowledge it, document it, and decide what should be formalized. If a decision routinely happens in chat, that is a signal. Either make it an explicit step in the system or design a retrieval layer that captures it with clear provenance.
For AI readiness, the question is simple: Where is the decision made, and where is it recorded? If those are different places, you need governance and a work graph before you need automation.