AI Readiness Starts With Your Critical Team, Not Just Leadership.
Most AI rollouts fail on people, not platforms. Gartner’s most recent workforce research puts a number on it: only 17 percent of Australian employees are what it calls “AI Champions,” while 56 percent are “AI Resisters.” That gap is not about skill. It is about who got asked before the tool arrived.
In our AI readiness piece, we named people readiness as one of six foundations a business needs before AI investment pays off. Most businesses get this foundation wrong in a specific, avoidable way: they ask three or four people in a room, usually leaders, and call that consultation. Then they wonder why the rest of the business is quiet, sceptical, or working around the new tool instead of with it.
Here is how we actually involve an entire team, not just the people already in the meeting.
Ask everyone the same two questions, not just the people in the room
Before any tool gets chosen, every person who touches the process gets asked two things, in writing, individually: what is the most repetitive or frustrating part of your week, and how do you feel about AI being introduced to your work right now.
Not a survey buried in an all-staff email that three people answer. A short, direct ask that goes to the person doing the task, not just their manager. The person entering data by hand every Friday afternoon knows exactly where the problem is. Their manager usually has a version of that answer, but it is secondhand.
The second question matters as much as the first. Sentiment is not a soft add-on. It is the difference between a rollout that lands and one that gets quietly avoided. You cannot fix resistance you never asked about.
Run the conversation team by team, not once at the top
A single leadership workshop does not reach the person who actually knows why a process breaks down. Real involvement means smaller conversations, run at the team level, with the people who do the work every day, not a summary passed down from someone who does not.
This takes longer than one meeting. It is also the only way anyone outside the leadership team ever gets a genuine say in what gets built, rather than being told about it after the decision is made.
Let the team nominate who tests it first
Instead of leadership picking who pilots a new tool, ask each team who among them would be willing to try it first and report back honestly, including what did not work. A peer who volunteered and is trusted by their team carries far more credibility for the rest of the group than a mandate from above ever will.
This is also where you find your genuine “AI Champions,” not by assuming who they are, but by asking who actually wants to engage.
Show people what changed because they said something
This is the step almost every business skips. If twelve people flag the same frustrating task in the first question, and the AI rollout addresses exactly that task, tell them. Directly. “You told us this was the problem, this is what we built because of it.”
Skip this step and the first two exercises read as theatre. Do it consistently and the next round of feedback gets more honest, not less, because people have seen that their answer changed something real.
Make it genuinely safe to say “this shouldn’t be automated”
Not every process should move to AI, and the people best placed to tell you that are the ones doing it. If the only feedback channel available is “how excited are you about this new tool,” you will never hear the answer that actually protects you from a bad rollout. Ask the question in a way that makes “this one shouldn’t change” a completely acceptable answer, not a failure to get on board.
Where this fits with the rest of AI readiness
A team that has genuinely been heard still cannot get value from AI if the systems behind it keep data locked away in silos. A perfectly connected system still fails if nobody who uses it was ever asked what they needed. The two foundations move together. Skipping either one shows up the same way: a login, a subscription, and nothing that actually changed day to day.
If you are not sure whether your team’s readiness or your systems are the bigger blocker right now, our free health check gives you a plain-English picture of both in under five minutes.
If the results point to something worth a proper conversation, the next step is a direct 20-minute call about what is actually holding your team back, and what the right sequence looks like from here.
Book a 30-minute call with Mark Cooray
Frequently asked questions
How do we involve a large team without it taking months?
Start with the two-question written ask, sent to everyone individually, not a meeting. That alone takes days, not months, and gives you a full picture before you run a single workshop. The team-by-team conversations only need to happen with the groups whose answers point to a real opportunity or a real concern.
What if leadership already knows what the team will say?
Ask anyway. The gap between what leadership assumes and what the person doing the task actually experiences is usually where the real insight sits. If leadership is right, you have lost nothing but confirmed it properly instead of guessing.
Who should pilot a new AI tool first?
Whoever the team nominates, not whoever leadership assumes is most capable. A peer-nominated pilot carries credibility a top-down assignment does not, and it surfaces honest problems faster because the pilot isn’t reporting to someone with a stake in the tool looking successful.
What do we do if someone says a process shouldn’t be automated at all?
Take it seriously and ask why. That answer is often the most valuable piece of feedback in the entire exercise, and dismissing it is exactly what turns a willing team member into a quiet “AI Resister.”
How does this connect to our systems and data?
Directly. Even a fully engaged, well-consulted team cannot get value from AI if the systems behind it do not share data automatically. Both foundations, people and systems, need addressing together, which is what a proper readiness audit is built to surface.
Mark Cooray is the Founding Director of Linking Integrating, a Melbourne-based digital transformation and systems integration consultancy helping growing businesses across Victoria and Australia build both the systems and the team readiness AI actually needs to deliver value.