My CEO and President told me AI was a fad and a waste of company time in 2025. Gallup just proved we were both right.

In 2025, my CEO and President told me to back off. I was pushing AI too hard, making people uncomfortable, and in their words — it wasn't going to be viable for another fewAI years, if ever.

They weren’t entirely wrong. The pushback was real.

Gallup just released data showing that Gen Z — the generation everyone assumed would lead AI adoption — is actually growing more skeptical, not less. Excitement for AI dropped 14 points in a single year. Anger rose 9 points. Nearly half of employed Gen Z workers believe AI's risks outweigh its benefits. Adoption has flatlined.

https://www.gallup.com/analytics/651674/gen-z-research.aspx

That's not a technology problem. I watched it happen from the inside.

So I did what any stubborn operator does when they know they're right and the room isn't ready. I stopped pushing and started pulling. Quietly. One manager at a time. No announcements, no mandates, no company-wide initiatives. Just results, person by person, until the results did the talking.

It worked. Against the wishes of leadership. Against the skepticism of seasoned sales reps whose own principals couldn't move them. Against a culture that wasn't ready.

What Gallup is describing isn't a Gen Z problem. It's a leadership problem.

Young employees don't trust AI because they don't have enough experience to know when it's wrong. They're being handed tools without context, in companies eliminating the entry-level positions where they would have learned that context in the first place. Telling them to use AI without that foundation is like handing a ten year old the keys to a car. They'll drive it. But it's going to be a disaster.

The answer isn't to take the keys away. It's to make sure someone who knows the road is sitting next to them — until they don't need that person anymore. That's how I approached every department. Find the person with the most relevant experience. Build their confidence first. Let them become the proof. Then let them do what you did.

That's not a training program. It's how judgment actually transfers between people — and it's the only AI adoption strategy I've seen work inside a real organization, accountable to real revenue, with real skeptics in the room.

The answer isn't mandates. It isn't threats. It isn't another company-wide AI training that everyone sits through and nobody uses.

It's experienced operators, working alongside people who don't have that experience yet, transferring judgment until they don't need you anymore.

That's what I did. And that's what Fieldnote does.

I'm not for everyone. If your CEO isn't bought in, don't call me. I'm not interested in fighting a battle your own leadership won't back. I've done that. I know how it ends.

But if you're the CEO — if you're the one who's bought in and you need someone who has been in the trenches, ignored the skeptics, and delivered results with nothing but a ChatGPT subscription and thirty years of knowing how people work — I'd like to talk.

Fieldnote. Human insight. AI precision.

Brad Gullion

Founder, Fieldnote

I help business leaders apply AI to improve decision-making, workflows, and performance inside real teams.

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