A senior leader once pushed me hard for more AI licences for their area. Passionate, articulate, impatient with the pace of the program. The kind of advocacy you’d think a technology executive would love.
Then I looked at the usage data. This leader was using their own licence less than almost anyone on their team.
I want to be careful here, because the easy version of this story is a gotcha, and that’s not the point. I don’t think the leader was being cynical. I think they’d done something very human: converted their genuine belief in AI into advocacy for other people, while quietly exempting themselves. AI was important, so their team should have it. Their own work was different, too senior, too nuanced, too busy. The same reasoning I once used myself, which is exactly why I recognised it.
But watch what the team experiences. Words say this matters. Behaviour says not for people like me. And behaviour wins, every time. The team’s usage was mediocre and I’d now argue it was mediocre precisely because advocacy without practice reads, at some level, as delegation. This is for you means this is beneath me, or beyond me, and neither message helps.
The conversation we eventually had was not about licences at all. It was gentle, and it started with my own story of doing the same thing. What surfaced underneath was ordinary and human: not knowing where to start, and a quiet fear of being visibly bad at something new in front of people who report to you. Senior leaders almost never get to be beginners in public. That, more than any technical barrier, is what their non-usage was protecting.
We got there. The leader started small, in private, then increasingly out loud. The team followed within weeks, no additional licences required.
When a leader in your organisation champions AI loudly, be grateful, then check quietly what their own usage says. The gap between the two is where your real adoption work is hiding.