I had three separate conversations last week where AI came up inside the first ten minutes. A board meeting, a strategy conversation, an industry catch up. All of these had one thing in common - the number of people who hadn't actually used an AI tool themselves in months or sometimes ever.
That gap is becoming the most expensive problem I see in leadership right now.
You cannot lead an AI-enabled organisation if you've never sat down and used the tools yourself, on your actual work.
I'm not suggesting you need to become a prompt engineer or write code. I'm talking about the specific kind of knowledge that only shows up when you've actually used the technology. Where it's genuinely sharp, where it falls over, how it changes the texture of your day. None of that is available unless you’ve played around in the tools yourself.
Contrast that with the Ready to Rise member I wrote about a couple of weeks back, the one who took the "stormy seas" challenge and went all in on AI. She didn't ask for a roadmap, she didn't form a working group. She picked a few tools, started using them on real work, and reshaped her business inside a month.
The difference between those two postures comes down to willingness to be uncomfortable. To sit with something that you don’t intuitively understand, or know how to operate. and produce output that's clumsy and a bit embarrassing at first. That's the part most leaders skip, but it's exactly where the learning sits.
So a question for you this week.
When was the last time you used an AI tool yourself, on a real piece of your own work? Not a demo, not a play prompt at a workshop, but an action at your desk during your workday.
If you can't remember, that could be the most useful feedback you'll get all week.
Block thirty minutes tomorrow, pick one thing you could use AI for, and use the tool. If your workplace doesn’t have a tool you can use safely, that’s a whole other issue!
That's where the shift actually starts.
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