Brandon Sammut

Every week I hear from product execs looking for advice on accelerating employee AI adoption within their orgs. I teamed up with @petergyang (long-time product leader at @Meta, @Twitter, @Twitch, @CreditKarma, @Microsoft, @Reddit, and @Roblox) to interview founders and product execs at six of the fastest-growing AI-forward companies—@TryRamp, @Shopify, @Duolingo, @Zapier, @WHOOP, @Intercom—to collect their most impactful tactics for driving employee AI adoption. From the interviews, Peter identified 5 steps that the most successful companies take to unlock AI adoption: 1. Explain the how 2. Track and reward adoption 3. Cut the red tape 4. Turn enthusiasts into teachers 5. Prioritize the high-impact tasks Here are the 25 best and specific tactics we gathered that you can implement right away at your company: *1. Explain the how* Saying “we are AI-first” means nothing if employees don’t know what that actually means for their day-to-day work. The companies that succeed provide specific tactics that employees and teams can adopt to meet those expectations. Here’s what this can look like: 1. Include specific tactics in your memo: @tobi, CEO of @Shopify, didn’t just say that “using AI is now a baseline expectation” in his now-famous memo. Instead, he shared concrete tactics he expects to see, like making AI prototyping part of the company’s GSD (get shit done) process. 2. Declare a “code red” moment: @WadeFoster, CEO of @Zapier, called an all-hands-on-deck moment in March 2023 after ChatGPT’s launch. He then shared a playbook and gave all employees a week off to put it into practice. 3. Define what “embracing AI” means: @LuisvonAhn, @Duolingo’s CEO, defined AI adoption as both “making our products better” and “empowering employees to do their best work.” Teams were encouraged to use AI for everything from speeding up lesson creation to prototyping. 4. Embed with individual teams: @darraghcurran, @Intercom’s CTO, set a goal to “2x productivity with AI” and then spent a week every month embedded with individual teams to identify and execute on the 2x opportunities. 5. Lead by example in real time: When a PM brings a problem to @yourgirlhils, @WHOOP's Head of Product, she’ll say, “Want me to show you how I solve this with AI?” Then she shares her workflows live. *2. Track and reward adoption* Like any good PM, you should track AI adoption as inputs (who’s using AI) and outputs (what business value it’s creating). You should also reward employees who are leading the charge to keep the momentum going. Here’s how top companies are tracking and rewarding adoption: 1. Make AI adoption part of performance reviews: @Shopify asks employees to rate colleagues on a 1-to-5 scale for how well they “reflexively use AI tools for improving and amplifying work outputs.” 2. Publish AI usage by team: At @TryRamp, leadership shares the number of AI power users (5+ actions a week) for tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and ChatGPT. This transparency creates natural accountability across teams. 3. Track team-specific impact: @Zapier tracks the impact of AI adoption by function. In sales, for example, when targeted leads engage with marketing content, AI auto-packages that information for the account rep—leading to 10 hours saved per week per rep. 4. Use proxy metrics for productivity: @Intercom tracks merged pull requests as a proxy for productivity gains. They’re already seeing a “durable improvement (about 20% year-over-year)” from AI-assisted development. 5. Make it a daily habit: @WHOOP gave employees a 30-day challenge with bite-size 2-minute tasks to complete and rewarded those who kept the longest streak. The point is that people will change their behavior with the right incentives. *3. Cut the red tape* Most companies have long approval processes for AI tools. But what they don’t realize is that their employees are already using AI. They’re just using it from their personal accounts. Cut the red tape if you don’t want employees to use AI tools that aren’t approved: 1. Create an AI learning budget: @Duolingo gave every employee $300 to try AI tools, courses, and subscriptions. This incentivizes constant experimentation. 2. Assign a lead to expedite approvals: @Zapier assigned a lead PM to own working with procurement, legal, and engineering to fast-track AI tool approvals and eliminate bottlenecks. 3. Give employees time to tinker: “No time” was the main reason employees cited for not trying new AI tools, so @Intercom CTO @darraghcurran encouraged managers to give employees dedicated time to skill up. 4. Provide multiple tool options: @Shopify provides access to a wide range of tools, including Claude, Perplexity, Cohere, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot, and Claude Code. They also encourage employees to contribute to a growing library of AI prompts and agents. 5. Embrace internal enthusiasm: @WHOOP lets employees nominate tools they’re excited to trial, like Fireflies for note-taking and Zapier for automation. Keep reading here (and I'd encourage you to share this with your team): lennysnewsletter.com/p/25-proven-ta…

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