How Do You Make Workers Choose AI Over Their Old Methods?
There is a massive challenge with current AI adoption in the workplace. While 37.4% of workers report using AI at work, they spend only 5.7% of their work hours actually using it. Publicis Sapient research reveals 60% of CEOs believe AI will revolutionize operations, but only 24% of executives managing those functions agree. The gap between "we have AI" and "AI transforms how we work" is enormous leaving opportunity for leaders to focus on AI adoption.
But AI is different from past technologies. When companies adopted email and intranets in the 1990s, workers had no alternative—you either used the company system or couldn't communicate. Adoption was fast because it was mandatory infrastructure. AI is optional. Workers can always fall back to their old methods. There's no forcing function.
Unlike becoming "an internet company" (which required rebuilding business models), AI adoption is about workers choosing to change how they personally work. That's harder. Electricity took 40 years to boost productivity because factories had to redesign layouts. AI requires workers to redesign their individual workflows—and they can simply refuse.
Historical adoption required clear forcing functions: "read the Bible or face damnation" for literacy, "track your money or go bankrupt" for bookkeeping. For AI, "be more productive" is too abstract to drive behavior change.
What Leaders Must Do Today
Make AI Mandatory for One Task
Stop making AI optional. Pick one concrete task where AI demonstrably saves time.
Action: For example, Starting Monday, require employees to attempt an AI answer before asking colleagues any question. They must share: (1) their prompt, (2) AI's response, (3) why it's insufficient. This creates both immediate friction reduction and a database of real use cases. Track questions saved per week.
Create Your First Worked Example
For AI to be adopted, you need worked examples—showing exactly how someone uses AI for a specific task, like Manzoni's 1540 bookkeeping manual that taught through real merchant ledgers.Action: Screen-record your best performer using AI for one task start-to-finish (prompts, iterations, output). Make it a 3-minute video showing exactly how Sarah reconciles invoices in 8 minutes instead of 40.
Hire Junior People as AI Champions
Research shows 93% of Gen Z use two or more AI tools weekly versus 79% of millennials. Gen Z workers lead with 82% adoption compared to 52% of Baby Boomers. Yet many organizations are cutting junior roles, assuming AI replaces entry-level work—exactly backward.
Action: Hire junior employees specifically as AI champions. Train them from day one on AI tools. Have them spend 25% of their time teaching older colleagues. The strategy of eliminating junior people because "AI will do their work" misses that junior people are your fastest AI adopters and best teachers.
Measure Time Spent, Not "Adoption"
Workers spend only 5.7% of work hours using AI despite 37% reporting they "use" it. Adoption theater wastes resources.
Action: Track daily for one month: (1) tasks using AI, (2) minutes spent, (3) time saved. Publish internally weekly. Celebrate highest time-saved, not most "engaged."
The Bottom Line
Successful cognitive technologies required 200-400 years for mass adoption. You don't have that long. Winners won't have "AI strategies"—they'll have rebuilt specific work processes.
Start with one process. Make it work. Document exactly how. Teach person-to-person. Make it mandatory. Measure actual time saved. Then move to the next one.
Stop strategizing. Start rebuilding.
Sources:
Publicis Sapient, "AI and Digital Business Transformation," 2025
St. Louis Federal Reserve, "The State of Generative AI Adoption in 2025," November 2025
Google Survey on Gen Z AI adoption, November 2024
London School of Economics & Protiviti, "Bridging the Generational AI Gap," 2025