Guiding our AI deployment with a set of employee councils - Inside Track Blog - Microsoft

Everyone's selling you an AI tool. Nobody's telling you who on your team actually has to make it work. That "$200/month AI tool nobody uses" story? I hear it every week. You weren't foolish for buyin

Everyone's selling you an AI tool. Nobody's telling you who on your team actually has to make it work.

That "$200/month AI tool nobody uses" story? I hear it every week. You weren't foolish for buying it. You were set up to fail before the login screen even loaded.

Here's what Microsoft quietly figured out with their own internal AI rollout: the technology wasn't the hard part. Getting people to trust it, use it, and fit it into real workflows — that was the work.

They created small employee councils. Not an IT committee. Not a vendor call. Actual workers from different departments, asked one simple question: "Where does this actually help you do your job better?"

That's it. That's the piece most AI rollouts skip entirely.

Before you buy another tool, spend 30 minutes with three people on your team. Ask them where they lose the most time each week on repetitive tasks. Write down exactly what they say. That list tells you which AI solution to buy — not a salesperson's demo.

One conversation. No budget required. And it gets your team bought in before anything is purchased.

What happened when you tried to roll out an AI tool — did anyone actually ask your team first?

#AIstrategy #SmallBusiness #BusinessLeadership #AIadoption

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It helps us translate enterprise AI priorities into practical guidance and execution support for teams building AI-enabled solutions. A photo of ...