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...
