#172 🤖 The AI Adoption Gap
Hello! Adam Thornhill here. ‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a month.
Today, you’ll learn about the AI adoption gap thanks to Unsolicited Feedback.
Who’s leading your AI strategy? Your lawyers or your operators?
Some companies are stuck in endless compliance reviews. Others are moving fast, setting clear deadlines for employee adoption.
Brian Balfour reveals the growing gap between laggards and leaders, and what might happen if you’re on the wrong side.
AI laggards
Some companies are completely blocked from adopting AI.
Their lawyers are setting the pace. They’ve found a new reason to live.
Lawyers have new things to charge for and new things to create, creating months long processes.
And that’s concerning.
Brian Balfour
AI leaders
Compare this to another company I spoke with. They’re pretty sizeable, somewhere between 500 and 750 employees, with hundreds of millions in revenue.
What they’re doing is a stark contrast.
They’ve already rewritten all of their job descriptions and performance reviews around AI adoption.
They have a team purely dedicated to reviewing AI tools, whether it's AI development, AI prototyping, etc.
They’re doing one-on-one training with each of their team members.
They’ve set expectations around the habits they expect from employees. They’ve told employees they have to change by X date.
And they told me they expect close to 50% of their employees not to make the change in behavior and adoption.
They’re planning on exiting those folks if they do not change by certain dates.
That's the massive gap between some of the companies I’m seeing.
I'm really questioning what happens as that gap widens.
Brian Balfour
Why it matters
If you’re not creating systems to help your teams adopt AI, you’re in serious trouble.
Here’s why AI adoption matters:
Speed compounds. Early adopters will ship faster, learn faster, and win faster.
Talent will migrate. Top performers want leverage. If your company isn’t serious about AI, they’ll find one that is.
AI is a culture shift. Adoption isn’t just about access. It’s about rewiring how people think, plan, and execute.
Which side are you on? If you need help accelerating AI adoption in your company, I’m happy to give free advice on what you can do next. Just reply to this email to setup a call.
Next steps
Before you start, appoint an AI owner, define your success metrics, and announce the plan company-wide.
Listen first. Gather use cases via surveys and 1-on-1s with employees.
Teach the basics. Give demos, share prompts, and show examples.
Invest in training. Don’t assume people will figure it out. Offer hands-on, personalised support.
Run a hackathon. Offer project choices and follow up with a quick survey.
Embed it. Launch a shared channel, schedule monthly reviews, and build AI habits into day-to-day workflows.
Your thoughts
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