Introduction

Okay, so I guess the first point here is a lot of you guys are in a good place, but yet when I've spoken to different people in the room, I'm hearing the same stories where there's pockets of transformation or we've started, but we don't know how to get going to the next stage or how do we evolve this. And what we've tried to do is to basically capture what we've been working on for the last three years with companies and put that into a simple framework that can allow us all to break this down and actually take it step by step to have successful transformation.

Why AI Adoption Is Different

The thing that we're noticing here is that 1AI adoption is not like a tech tool rollout. It's not a mandate for HR or for the IT department. It's a much more sophisticated operation.

operation the companies who are paving a way for the future are the ones who see it as a human a strategic and an operational system change right this is about operational change real capability shift in the company um and this is a simple stack that we put together uh i actually

A Simple Framework for Successful AI Transformation

spoke to someone a few minutes ago and they were talking about um level three but they hadn't done level one they hadn't done level two so they hadn't had this leadership activation they hadn't built the foundations the capability in the team and they were thinking about how do we go agentic And I'm going to break these down even further now and look at why each of them are.

I don't want to talk about our products and how we service each of these areas. What I want to share is our experience. So you can just be empowered to do this independently and call us in when you need us. But we want to impart our learnings.

Level 1: Leadership Activation

One, leadership activation. It's actually quite hard to be a leader, a CEO, a C -suite member, a board member in this really, really fast -paced, accelerated world of AI. leading in ambiguity is really hard and expecting a leader to come to the table with a 24 -month plan of where we're going with AI is probably like a major blocker for success right so what we try to

do is one start with clarity how can we ensure that every single member of our c -suite understands what is possible and has a shared understanding of where we can go next so we can have an actual conversation what does that look like something like whatever what devon did earlier on like that are the possible bringing to life what is possible an extended version of that like

really bringing together a shared language a shared understanding but then it needs to go to the next stage we do need a leadership mandate the leadership role is not like a tech to roll out the leadership role is a really really vital part of this succeeding and i saw in the in the in the survey, many of you did have that backing.

That's a great start. Trying to make sure that it's shaped into a minimum of a nine -month horizon. What's the horizon looking like?

What's the horizon plan? But what's the three -month goal? And then continually building and shaping on top of that, iterating and learning and evolving how you do it.

Build it into your OKRs, right? Take your leadership offside.

Do a workforce transformation plan, thinking about what does that really look like? You know, you can't go any further until you have that clarity.

Level 2: Building Team Fluency and Competency

Then we want the team to really understand what is possible.

Guess what guys, the nuance here is that they, it's not training people how to use tools. Anyone can find the button.

What you want to do is build a fluency, build the understanding of how to collaborate with AI, like exactly what Devon was showing us earlier on, like where it's a mindset shift to work in in this collaborative way to start to delegate work to even actually guys the reality is there's

major behavioral shift required to be successful and in fact in that journey like hands up here who's already encountered like themselves this identity shift this idea of like what is my role now if this is if this can do that when you leave your team to figure that out on their own you're going to stall

but when you build it into your training that the training is actually about AI fluency and AI competency you're starting to set your team up for success

and that's building a foundation you can go anywhere with to any tool, to any level of agentification

is that even a word? it is now

what you want is real genuine curiosity and engagement with what is possible and the team are powered to do that

and then when you have that when you're going to get that far you start to go

Level 3: Operational Change and New Ways of Working

how do we bring this to the next level how do we evolve who we are how do we move from this individual level

this rubric is brilliant by the way absolutely brilliant

how do we go from how do I use AI in my role and change my workflows

how do I build an AI partner to actually as a team what are the non -incremental changes we're going to make to how we work

what is the operational change that's going to happen in this company imagine then the following quarter it's like at a department level how are we going to change how work gets done completely what we do and how we do it how is that going to completely change now that we have real foundations we can have that conversation we can build and build and build um and also this culture shift

Evolving the Champion Role and Leading Human Adaptation

right so you're bringing at this point you have had champions who've done a good job of laying the foundations who've engaged with the team got everyone through the academy and everyone's got the fluency right but the role of the champion completely shifts when we move into this operational change right when we go to an up new operating system we have to then invest back into

the champions taking them off site immersion weekends doing transformation days with the champions helping them actually lead this change in the organization understanding the human human adaption experience so that they can preempt it and be prepared to handle and guide the team, right?

Has anyone encountered any of these human adaption challenges already? Yeah. Someone want to call out what you've kind of seen? I see a lot of nodding heads. Yeah. Okay.

I got the mic. We got a mic.

Example: Frontline Hesitation About AI in Education

I'm in education, and admissions sometimes doesn't want to allow the front line. like for students incoming students I must call it business sales and so they can only handle so many students in a personal way and so they're always

worried about they're very fluid in AI they use it for a lot of different things but they're really guarded about allowing contact between artificial intelligence and the customer and so that's kind of like that's a that's an adaptation that they're not they're not making I don't think and they know

their business better than I do so in some ways like I'm thinking like okay maybe we need to let them have it. We need to not allow, or we need to listen to what they think

is the right thing to do in their business. So this is something that, like, organizationally we're struggling with. Yeah.

I suppose the idea of culture allows us to codify what to expect and what's expected, right? And as soon as we start to see around the corners

of where this is going, we can start to do that as leaders.

Managing the “AI Vampire” and Using Time Reclaimed Well

Has anyone had their team sort of hit this AI fatigue or AI vampire yet? Like, we're saving all this time, right? We're saving 7 .5 hours a week minimum, right?

Where's that time going? How do we own our time? How do we help our team understand what happens when you get 30 % of your time back?

What can you do with that? What's the expectation of your organization? Actually, that is a question that belongs on the assessment, I'm just realizing.

yes or no? And I would assume the answer is no in most cases. So raise your hand if the answer is yes.

I have had people on my team complain about the AI vampire. And if you don't know what that is, the answer is no. Raise your hand if you would say yes.

I have had people on my team complain about the AI vampire. The AI vampire is a phenomenon. You raise your hand.

Okay. The AI vampire is a phenomenon where someone who experiences true, exceptional, exponential lift Lift cannot stop working because they get so much gratification out of being so much

more productive. And just like a vampire, you're in a room with a vampire, it starts to suck the life out of you. People who are experiencing a certain level of lift with AI literally can't stop.

And they aren't going, wow, it only takes me an hour a day to do all the work I used to do. I'm going to go golf. I'm going to spend time with my kids.

I'm going to invest in my community. They don't do that. They go, why am I going to bed at 4am? That's the honest truth.

And anybody who's, if, if folks aren't experiencing that, then you already know, they're hardly even scratching the surface of what's possible because the people who are really experiencing it need to get help in some ways, right?

Truthfully. And that, but that's like, there's a whole community support around, of support around helping people who go, I can't stop. And if you haven't gotten there,

That is a stage of the adoption journey. Yeah, I mean, we're going to run an activation in a moment, but I've run it in rooms where the executives are having a conversation with AI and they literally say, ooh, I could talk all day.

How do I know when to stop? They literally, I see suite members, how do I know when to stop, Marina? This is actually a really important part of what Jeremy was actually talking about earlier as well. this human at the helm, like our role, our ownership in this journey.

Setting Clear Expectations and Owning the Outcomes

1We are responsible for what goes in, we're responsible for what comes out and we're responsible for what we do with it. We're responsible for our time, we're

responsible for making the most of this, we're responsible for powering our teams to make the most of this right now.

I also had this moment where we had the CFO from OpenAI and she was quite stressed at a round table and she said you'll have to excuse me guys I have to get ready for a board presentation this afternoon and my team member just sent me the deck

and I've asked them has it been through AI, is it ready for me to just do a final sweep and our team member said no it has not been through AI

this was six months ago why had it not gone through AI before it got to the CFO the team member thought it was cheating

if we don't set the expectation of what is possible and what we expect and how we use it, how to iterate, how far to go with iteration, how to own your time, how to use the time for innovation. We're not going to get to the level of transformation ROI that we know is possible. This is also

where the agentic activation can start. Once you've built those foundations, you can really move into tools like Rebel, Cloud Coworker, you can start to really evolve your operating rating system as a company.

Scaling What Works Across the Organization

And finally, scale it. So anyone who's got pockets of this already happening, the way we're thinking about scaling it is really powering up those champions for

success, building those internal rhythms and cadence that allow you to monitor, set expectations, learn, iterate, evolve together, very similar to OKRs, right? Build into your OKRs.

and then literally roll it out into the next team set some goals for the business so this worked once what did we learn from the first time that we did this what would work better like literally

timeline it roll it out org wide and if you're starting to embed agentic systems start doing the same process again build from the foundations understanding what is possible with agentic systems build the foundations and then start to roll it out to the team that's when you're going to really start to compound.

Conclusion: What Level Are You at Now?

And so what level are you at right now?