A community bank asked one or two people per department to match one AI solution to their worst pain point. Fifty of 200 employees joined as champions, and the bank pulled its rollout forward six months.
Where you're stuck
How do we scale our AI wins across the organization?
Most organizations have AI champions and a few real wins, and nothing carries those wins from one team to the next. What connects them is an AI champions network: named AI leads in each part of the business who coach colleagues, keep working patterns findable and connect teams building the same thing.
What you've built
AI champions, a place to share what they find, and teams that have cut real hours from their week.
The thing most likely holding you back
Each win stays with the team that found it. Your champions work on their own team's problems, on top of their day jobs.
Melissa · 53 sec
Stop asking your team to learn AI on weekends
Try this with your AI team
Trace your last five AI wins
One row per win. The first row is an example.
| The win | Team that built it | In use by a team that didn't build it? | Who else is building the same thing? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claim summary prompt | Claims intake | No | Underwriting |
Most organizations can fill in the first two columns. The last two are the AI lead's job.
What a stuck win costs
One win in one team, while nine others do the same work by hand
8 hours a month the win saves one team
9 teams doing the same work without it
12 months
864 hours a year left on the table, from one win
Put your own numbers in the boxes. Then count the teams building their own version of the same thing, because each one pays for the build again. Now multiply by every win in your table.
Why champions programs stall
What they do well
They find the enthusiasts, train them and get a first round of wins.
Where they stall
Moving a win to the next team isn't anyone's job. The program ends after a few months, and the models keep changing.
Melissa · 47 sec
Why shared AI responsibility fails
What the research says about scaling AI
42% of companies abandoned most of their AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% the year before. The average company scrapped 46% of its proofs of concept before they reached production. Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, via CIO Dive, March 2025 (1,000+ respondents)
Only 6% of organizations are AI high performers, and nearly three-quarters of them have redesigned workflows because of AI. About a quarter of everyone else has. Source: McKinsey, The State of AI, 2026 (1,719 participants)
Employees are five times as likely to be top AI users when AI solves their own work frictions. Only 42% know where AI could help their work. Source: Gartner, October 2025 (2,986 employees)
From the field
How three organizations spread their AI wins
Melissa · 49 sec
How one bank cut an eight-hour task to three minutes
The Head of AI at a major home-appliance manufacturer read the book and started an AI leads forum.
An AI leader in one of Melissa's cohorts turned a side-of-desk AI program into a funded function with decision rights.
What an AI champions network looks like
Start here
Give your champions a network
Right now
Wins live in pockets, shared when someone has time.
With this move
Named AI leads, starting at about five hours a week, help front-line practitioners adopt AI. They learn how to influence without authority. The same network carries governance and helps manage the agent lifecycle.
The AI Leads Accelerator
Designed by Melissa Reeve, delivered by a Hyperadaptive delivery partner.
Questions about scaling AI wins
- What is an AI champions network?
- A group of AI leads, one or more in each part of the business, who coach colleagues, keep working patterns findable and connect teams building the same thing. It carries wins past the team that found them.
- How are AI leads different from champions?
- An AI lead has a named role, about five hours a week for it, and an understanding of the metrics that matter.
- How many AI leads do we need?
- Start with one or two per business area. An Accelerator cohort takes up to 12.
- How long until we see results?
- Each lead leaves the first day with a 30-day plan. Leads baseline their metrics and measure every week to see progress.