After building the baseline knowledge and awareness of Artificial Intelligence and verifying that your team has what it takes to implement AI tools, the third step in the AI journey is to Pilot the AI solution with a meaningful portion of the organization. In this phase, you'll validate your overall rollout strategy and work out any technology kinks or change adoption issues prior to rolling AI tools out to all users.

As we near the end of a brutally hot summer, I'm looking forward to taking a few days to go fly fishing in Montana later this month! I couldn’t help but notice that success with change adoption overlaps with this sport in a few key ways:

1. It's Best to Use a Guide:

   You'll vastly improve your chances of success if you seek help from a professional who has fished the river many times, understands the mind of your intended target, and brings a solid overall process as well as a few subtle techniques you might not have learned yet.

2. You Can Make Your Own Luck

   They say luck is the marriage of preparation and opportunity. That's true on the river and that's true when guiding change adoption.

3. You'll Need a Map & Equipment

   Good equipment is necessary, but not sufficient. Knowing where you are doesn't mean the fish will be there too. So even a perfect process, (like one of the dozens of great change management methods out there), will not deliver results if you don’t commit to the work, adapt to conditions, and diligently follow through.

    

4. Plan to Catch and Release

   When you do land that big fish (or deliver that big change), don't keep it to yourself. Take a few selfies, then plan to catch the best things you've learned and release them to your team so everyone can apply what they've experienced to the next challenge. The entire river (and your organization) will be better off.

Thanks for taking a minute to read this! Please send us a note if you or your team need help with your next change.

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f you are an individual contributor with a great idea for innovation or culture change that you’d like to see implemented in your organization, I would encourage you to leverage the advantages I’ve mentioned.  Just because you have no budget and no bully pulpit doesn't mean you can’t instigate change.  But instead of pounding on your leadership as the problem or calling out your managers as the roadblocks, you’ll need to stick your neck out and lead with strength in the areas you control.

Great ideas and the momentum organizations will need to get them implemented can be driven by executives, managers or even individual team members - as long as they diligently address a few practical change-related activities.

Bloom Where You’re Planted:  When I work with organizations to improve their overall change capacity, I start by recognizing three groups of potential Change Agents and treat them each a bit differently.