Giving employees a reason to embrace AI tools

Posted on the A Mind at Work LinkedIn company page on 4/11/26

I've always been naturally drawn to finding better tools to get work done, and, professionally, that's meant figuring out how to get teams of humans excited to try new things. Being a cheerleader for change is not for the thin-skinned. If I had a nickel for every eye roll or whispered snarky remark I've encountered during team meetings where a new process or tool was being introduced, I could have retired comfortably years ago. Humans loathe mandated change. Don't believe me? Just think of the number of healthcare insurance providers you've had in the past decade and how you felt every time you knew a change was coming.

That's why I wasn't at all surprised by an article published yesterday on Fortune.com that cited the growing number of employees openly rebelling against the adoption of licensed AI tools in the workplace. The piece cites a major gap between executive optimism and employee reality, with many workers either bypassing company AI tools or avoiding them altogether.

That disconnect is a major reason our AI for Teams workshop starts with team problems first and LLM solutions second. It’s tempting to begin with the shiny object: Which model should we use? What’s the best prompt? What new feature just launched? But in practice, most teams don’t struggle because they lack access to AI. They struggle because they haven’t yet identified the right friction points, the right use cases, or the right level of trust needed to make these tools genuinely helpful.

Before asking a team to adopt an AI workflow, I think it’s worth asking:
-Where are people losing time now?
-What tasks create drag, repetition, or frustration?
-Where would faster actually matter?
-Where does human judgment still need to stay firmly in the driver’s seat?

Our approach begins with discovering current time-sucks, taking inventory of tools already in the toolbox, and assigning ownership for exploration before jumping to solutions.

AI can be incredibly useful. But when adoption starts with decrees instead of discovery, it’s no surprise when people quietly opt out. The better starting point is not “How do we get everyone using AI?” It’s “What does this team actually need help with?”