Will the team come along

How do I get my team on board with AI?

You buy licences, arrange a training session, and three weeks later half the team has stopped using AI. The technology was ready, the people were not.

You bring a team along by mapping out together what costs them time or energy every day. What AI can do comes later. People embrace a tool that takes away an annoying job; they rarely embrace something imposed from above. So pick one task your people complain about themselves, solve the problem together and let the result do the convincing. One visible success on the floor moves more colleagues than ten presentations about the future.

Start with the people already using AI under the radar, the shadow usage. In practically every team a few front-runners have been using AI on a personal account for a long time. Make them your guides: give them half an hour to show the rest what they do and what it gets them. That works beautifully, because the example comes from their own world and is about their own work.

The resistance that remains is usually an honest question underneath: am I slowly being made redundant? Be open about it. In the projects we run, AI almost never takes over a job, but it does take over the boring part of it: the sorting, the looking up, the collecting, the writing of the first draft. The planner still sets the route, the salesperson still has the conversation. Say that out loud, because the unspoken part is what holds people back.

And keep asking what they think of the new tools. KPIs show whether something got faster; why people keep using it or stop is something you only hear if you ask. It is precisely the sceptics who point out the weak spots your enthusiasts overlook.

Is the brake on your side technology or people? The free AI Readiness Scan checks your sponsor, your middle management and your shared story among other things, and sends you a plan of action.