Getting buy-in from skeptical teams and what actually drives adoption
I’ve watched dozens of technology implementations fail. Not because the technology didn’t work. Because the people didn’t buy in.
This is especially true in physical industries. Construction, manufacturing, energy. These are environments where skepticism isn’t a bug. It’s a survival mechanism. People in these industries have been burned by technology promises for decades. They’ve sat through the demos, signed the contracts, and then watched the software collect dust because nobody could figure out how to make it work in the real world.
So when you show up talking about AI, you’re not starting from zero. You’re starting from negative. They assume you don’t understand their business. Because almost nobody who’s come before you did.
Here’s what I’ve learned about actually getting adoption.
Stop Selling the Vision. Start Solving the Problem.
The biggest mistake I see companies make is leading with the big picture. They talk about digital transformation. They show roadmaps with five phases. They paint a vision of the future state.
Nobody cares.
The project manager buried in paperwork doesn’t care about your vision. The controller who spends 30 hours a month on manual data entry doesn’t want to hear about transformation. They want to know if you can fix the thing that’s making their life miserable right now.
When we work with new clients, we don’t pitch a platform. We pitch one small thing. Do you like manually entering this data into two systems? No? Let us fix that. That’s it.
We call it micro-value. Find one pain point so obvious the customer can’t say no. Solve that. Then expand.
The vision comes after trust. Not before.
Understand What People Are Actually Afraid Of
When someone resists new technology, the stated reason is rarely the real reason.
They’ll say they don’t have time to learn something new. What they mean is they’re afraid of looking incompetent in front of their team.
They’ll say the old way works fine. What they mean is they’ve built their entire workflow around the current system, and they don’t know what happens to their job if that changes.
They’ll say it’s too complicated. What they mean is nobody has shown them what’s in it for them personally.
Think about it. Most technology implementations focus entirely on company benefits. We’ll save money. We’ll be more efficient. We’ll reduce errors. That’s great for the CFO. But the person actually using the system every day? They’re thinking about whether this makes their job harder or easier. Whether it makes them more valuable or less.
If you want adoption, you have to answer the question nobody’s asking out loud: What happens to me?
Show Individual Benefit, Not Just Company ROI
Here’s what actually drives adoption. Showing people how the change benefits them personally.
I talked to a CFO recently who implemented automation across her accounting team. The first few months were rough. People dragged their feet. They kept finding reasons to use the old spreadsheets.
What changed? She stopped talking about efficiency gains and started talking about what they wouldn’t have to do anymore.
She told her project managers: You won’t have to sit with me for two hours every month going through financials. The system handles it. You get that time back.
She told her accounting staff: You won’t have to chase down subcontractor insurance certificates anymore. The bot sends the reminders, tracks the responses, and flags the problems. You just handle the exceptions.
Once people understood that automation meant removing the tedious parts of their job, not replacing their job, resistance dropped.
The key message isn’t “this replaces you.” It’s “this raises your responsibilities.” Nobody wants to spend their career doing data entry. Show them the path to more meaningful work.
Start With People Who Want It
Not everyone will be an early adopter. That’s fine. Don’t waste energy trying to convert the skeptics first.
Find the person on the team who’s already frustrated with the current process. The one who’s been asking for better tools. The technically curious one. Start with them.
When they succeed, they become your internal champion. Their peers see the results. They hear about the time saved. They watch someone they trust navigate the change successfully.
That’s worth more than any executive mandate. People trust their colleagues more than they trust leadership announcements.
One success story inside the organization does more for adoption than a hundred PowerPoint slides.
Make the First Win Fast and Obvious
The longer it takes to see results, the more likely the implementation fails. People lose patience. Priorities shift. The skeptics say, “I told you so.”
This is why we structure our engagements around proving value in 14 days. Pick one workflow. Automate it. Show results. Then decide whether to continue.
That timeline forces focus. You can’t boil the ocean in two weeks. You have to pick something specific, something measurable, something that matters to the people who will actually use it.
When someone sees their monthly reporting process go from six hours to thirty minutes, the conversation changes. They’re not asking whether this works. They’re asking what else it can do.
Accept That Some People Won’t Change
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Some people will never adopt new technology. No matter how good it is. No matter how much time it saves. No matter how obvious the benefits.
That’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem. And you can’t solve people’s problems with better software.
The goal isn’t 100% adoption on day one. The goal is enough adoption to prove value, build momentum, and create internal pressure for the holdouts to get on board.
In my experience, once 60 to 70 percent of a team is using the new system successfully, the rest follow. Not because they’re suddenly convinced. Because they don’t want to be the person still doing things the hard way while everyone else has moved on.
Change Management Is the Product
Here’s the thing: most technology companies get it wrong. They think their job is to build great software. Then change management is somebody else’s problem.
That’s backwards.
For industries that have been burned by technology over and over, change management isn’t separate from the product. It is the product. The ability to get adopted, to prove value quickly, and to work within existing workflows instead of demanding everyone change how they operate.
The best technology in the world is worthless if nobody uses it.
So when you’re evaluating AI solutions for your organization, don’t just ask what the technology can do. Ask how it gets implemented. Ask how long before you see results. Ask what happens when your team pushes back.
Because they will push back. The question is whether your vendor has a plan for that.
Bassem Hamdy is the CEO and co-founder of Briq, an autonomous workforce platform for physical industries. He previously served as SVP of Marketing and Strategy at Procore, where he helped scale the company from $10M to $100M ARR.
