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THIS WEEK'S BRIEF
Last week we found the AI already running in your tools. This week, the harder problem. Getting people to use it, and use it well. Most adoption plans stall right here. The tools work fine. The people who'd use them are wary, and a mandate just makes them go quiet. The teams that adopt well start somewhere smaller than a rollout.
THE USE CASE
A peer reached out for help. She's a Chief of Staff in a field where confidentiality is everything, and she wanted to bring AI to her team. The team was the holdup. They weren't being difficult. In their world, one wrong output with a name or a sensitive detail creates exposure you can't walk back, so they held back on all of it.
Pushing them to just try it would've backfired. So I helped her work with the caution. We found one job with nothing sensitive in it: turning rough notes into a clean first draft of internal meeting notes. AI clearly helped, and the downside was near zero. A safe first win, on the team's terms. Once they saw AI be useful without being risky, the fear stopped running the conversation. One thing I'd do differently is lead with the safe win first. The risk talk comes after.
THE PROMPT (members only)
The full adoption-blocker prompt is for CoS Signal members, along with the prompt library and everything else members get. Founding rate is locked at $14.99/month or $99/year.
THE SIGNAL
Access to AI isn't the bottleneck anymore. IBM's 2026 study found 85% of employees can use AI at work and only 25% do, a 60-point gap. The tools are sitting on the shelf. What's missing is a reason to trust them, and no new license buys that.
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THE RESOURCE
The ADP Workplace AI Insights details how AI deployment alters actual workforce health, measuring specific shifts in employee stress levels, teamwork dynamics, and individual engagement. Useful if you're the one responsible for getting a team over the line.
ONE MORE THING
This is part 2 of 4 on managing the AI you didn't hire. Part 1 was finding it. This one is getting it used, without steamrolling the people who have good reasons to be careful. If you do one thing this week, pick your most cautious skeptic and design one safe win for them. One won-over skeptic does more for adoption than any memo. Revisit part 1 here: The AI you never turned on is already in your data
LET ME KNOW
What's your biggest AI blocker?
Until next week,
Stephanie
CoS Signal, by the AI Empowered CoS
P.S. The ideas, frameworks, and words in this piece are my own. I used AI to assist with design and file production.