by Wayne Pales | Feb 1, 2026
A colleague showed me something recently that gave me two reactions in the space of a minute. She’d used AI to analyse a dataset that normally takes her half a day of manual effort. Minutes, not hours, and the insights were good. My first reaction was delight....
by Wayne Pales | Jan 25, 2026
As we moved AI beyond the early adopters, I kept wrestling with a familiar tension: risk and opportunity, pulling in opposite directions. Most organisations I’ve worked in resolve that tension the same way. Lock things down first. Write the policies, build the...
by Wayne Pales | Jan 18, 2026
Before we gave AI to anyone, we taught the executive. That sequencing was deliberate, and I’d defend it fiercely. The standard technology playbook works the other way. Roll out to early adopters, generate momentum, and brief leadership through steering...
by Wayne Pales | Jan 11, 2026
The most useful adoption advice I give people sounds like a gimmick. Name your agents. For months I referred to AI as “the tool”, and that language did quiet damage. Tools are things IT deploys, governs and owns. Calling AI a tool let everyone, including...
by Wayne Pales | Jan 4, 2026
Someone once suggested we reward people based on how many AI prompts they ran. It was well intentioned. It was also one of the fastest “no” decisions I’ve made in this whole program. I understood the appeal. Adoption metrics were patchy, leaders...
by Wayne Pales | Dec 28, 2025
Early on, I did what every technology leader does. I demonstrated. Look what it can do. The room would lean in, someone would say “wow”, and I’d leave feeling the cause had been advanced. It hadn’t. I eventually noticed that the wow almost...
by Wayne Pales | Dec 21, 2025
The most effective adoption mechanism in our whole AI program wasn’t in the plan. It was lunch. We had built the formal machinery you’d expect. Learning modules, working sessions, a community of practice, executive updates. All useful. But the moment I...
by Wayne Pales | Dec 14, 2025
One word almost undid months of work. The word was “Pilot”. We were preparing to launch AI tools broadly across the organisation. The plan was solid, the licences arranged, the learning program designed. And in every document and every conversation, we...
by Wayne Pales | Dec 7, 2025
My whole career trained me to start with strategy. Vision, use cases, investment plan, execute. When AI arrived on our agenda, every instinct said do the same. We didn’t. We experimented first. And I now think that decision, more than any other, is why...
by Wayne Pales | Nov 30, 2025
For the first few months, every AI conversation in our organisation orbited the same question: should we allow this? It’s the natural question for critical infrastructure. We supply an essential service. Our risk culture is strong for good reason, and...
