Stop asking employees to adopt AI

People don’t need another mandate. They need a clear destination, work that feels more meaningful, and AI that’s easier to use than to ignore.

Organizations are facing an urgent change management challenge. Leaders are convinced that artificial intelligence will transform their business, yet the people needed to carry that transformation forward have stopped trying, or so it appears. According to McKinsey’s Superagency in the Workplace report, employees are already using generative AI three times more than their leaders realize. Yet only 1% of companies say AI is fully integrated into how work gets done. Workers are moving. Organizations aren’t. Much of that activity, as we’ll see, is happening outside approved systems entirely—less a sign of resistance than a signal of unmet need.