According to Fortune, a new MIT study found that for “95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT’s research points to flawed enterprise integration.”
Most leaders think about AI adoption all wrong. They see it as a procurement process. They research tools, watch demos, negotiate contracts, and then “roll out” the new software to their team. Then they wonder why it fails.
They wonder why adoption is low, why no one is using the expensive new tool, and why it hasn’t magically transformed the business.
The reason is simple: they bought a tool, but they forgot to build a culture.
As leaders who have spent our careers at the intersection of People and Technology, we’ve seen this firsthand. The companies that win with AI aren’t the ones with the fanciest tech stack. They’re the ones that successfully weave AI into the very fabric of how their company works. They understand that leveraging AI isn’t just a new way of working…it’s a new way of thinking. And that kind of shift doesn’t come from software; it comes from deliberate, human-centric leadership.
The Three Pillars of an AI-Ready Culture
You can’t just install an AI-ready culture. You have to cultivate it. It grows from three key pillars:
1. Psychological Safety & Transparency
Let’s be real: for many of your employees, AI is scary. They’re worried it’s going to make their job obsolete. If you roll out new AI tools in a top-down, opaque way, you will be met with fear, resistance, and even sabotage.
Building a culture of psychological safety is the antidote. This means:
- Being Radically Transparent: Talk openly about why you’re bringing in AI. Frame it as a tool for augmentation, not replacement. Your goal is to achieve 10X everyone, not zero everyone.
- Co-Creating the Rules: Don’t just impose AI policies. Create a council with employees from different departments to co-create the rules of engagement. When people have a hand in building the policies, they are far more likely to trust and adopt them.
- Celebrating Failure: Not every AI experiment will work. You have to create a culture where it’s safe for a team to try a new tool, have it fail, and share the learnings without fear of blame.
2. A Maniacal Focus on Problem-Solving
An AI-ready culture is a problem-solving culture. It’s a place where people are constantly asking, “Is there a smarter, faster, better way to do this?”
This is a shift from a “this is how we’ve always done it” mindset to a “how can we get AI to do this for us?” mindset. As a leader, you can foster this by:
- Starting with Pain Points: Constantly ask your team: “What’s the most annoying, repetitive part of your job?” Then, make it your mission to find an AI solution to kill that task. When your team sees that AI is there to eliminate their worst work, they’ll become your biggest champions.
- Rewarding Process Innovation: Celebrate and reward the employees or teams who find clever new ways to use AI to improve a workflow. Make process innovation a key part of performance reviews.
3. Continuous Learning as a Core Competency
The AI landscape is changing at a dizzying pace. The tool that was cutting-edge six months ago might be obsolete today. The only way to keep up is to build a culture of continuous learning.
This means:
- Investing in Upskilling: You need to provide ongoing training to help your team develop the new skills required to work with AI, like prompt construction, data analysis, and ethical oversight.
- Encouraging “Productive Play”: Give your team the time and permission to experiment with new AI tools. A “demo day” where teams can share cool new things they’ve discovered can be incredibly powerful.
- Hiring for Curiosity: When you’re hiring, look for candidates who are naturally curious and adaptable. In the age of AI, a person’s ability to learn is more important than what they already know.
Conclusion: Your Job Is to Be the Gardener
As a leader, you can’t force an AI culture on your organization. Your job is to be the gardener. You have to prepare the soil (psychological safety), plant the right seeds (a problem-solving mindset), and provide the water and sunlight (continuous learning).
When you focus on building the culture first, the tools become easy. You create an organization that doesn’t just use AI, but thinks with AI. And that is how you build a company that can truly scale smarter.
To see how we’re putting these ideas into practice, learn more about Chiri’s approach.