The most uncomfortable position I’ve taken this year is this one: using AI to amplify your work is an expectation, not an option.
I resisted it for months. Everything in modern change management argues against it. Bring people along. Respect different paces. Let adoption grow organically through champions and success stories. We are doing that, and it has worked, to a point.
But organic adoption has a ceiling. The curious are flying. The middle are dabbling. And a meaningful group are waiting, politely, indefinitely, for this to blow over. When we made foundational AI training optional, the people who opted out were, almost perfectly, the people who needed it most. “Optional” doesn’t mean everyone chooses freely. It means the already-engaged deepen their advantage while the hesitant fall further behind, and the gap compounds monthly, which eventually turns into a performance issue as AI is raising the bar for performance of almost any role.
That gap is what forced my hand. Seeing the early adopters moving further and further ahead. Thinking to myself, we will get to a point where people will no longer be meeting performance expectations. People under that kind of pressure are not open to learning and embracing new things. They either double down and put in more hours, or quietly check-out. Neither is a good outcome.
So adoption is mandatory, and expectations explicit. Not “you must use AI for everything”, which would be absurd, but: you need to experiment with these tools, you need to build the judgement to use them safely, to know how to use them effectively and safely, and to know when to use them and when they may not, yet, deliver value.
I know there is still apprehension, even silent refusal with some. Others admitted the mandate gave them permission they couldn’t give themselves; opting in had felt like volunteering for extra work. But I can not sit by quietly letting them become less employable, on my watch. Time will tell if I should have left this decision with the individual, but I feel a responsibility knowing just how much AI has amplified my own output.
Where has your organisation drawn this line? If everything about AI is still optional, look closely at who is opting out. That’s where your future capability gap is forming.