Copilot Catalyst Lesson 5: Culture is Contagious; So Is Resistance
Have you ever been in this situation before? You walk into someone’s office excited to share an idea, but before you even get the first line out, they’re already explaining why it won’t work. They’re off on a tirade, why it’s been tried before, why the timing’s off, why it’s more complicated than people think. After going on for 5 or 10 minutes they eventually look up and say, “So anyway… what did you want to talk about?”
By then, the moment has clearly passed. You tell them, “Never mind, we’re on the same page. How about that football game?” with a mental note to watch out if that topic comes up again.
Direct Reports Watch Their Leaders
Direct reports are always watching. They’re not just listening to what leaders say in meetings, they’re actively picking up on subtle signals. They’re noticing which projects get noticed, they see which topics raise eyebrows, and what gets prioritized when things get busy.
This focused attention is not about politics or gamesmanship. It’s a survival mechanism. For thousands of years, individual humans thrived by reading the group and aligning with those in charge. Stepping out on a limb could be costly. That instinct is still running the show.
We’ve watched this play out across our Copilot Catalyst pilot program. One genuinely curious leader will have more impact than a well-designed workshop, simply because their enthusiasm creates permission. Their team sees someone they respect trying things, asking questions, sharing what’s working, and suddenly it feels safe to experiment.
The opposite is equally true. One skeptical VP can slow down an entire division without ever saying they’re opposed to AI. All it takes is a visible moment of doubt in the right meeting wondering whether this work will really go anywhere. The message gets picked up immediately.
This isn’t people being irrational about technology. They’re reading the organizational signals and responding to what they see.
This creates an interesting dynamic. Leaders are there to set the vision and direction of the organization. When teams align with their leader's approach, things move. That’s what good alignment does. But alignment doesn’t have a preferred direction. A skeptical leader creates a skeptical team, not because people are inherently resistant to AI, but because they're doing what good teams do: following their leader’s cues.
This is how different parts of the organization start moving at different speeds with AI. Some departments are running experiments and building momentum. Others are being thoughtful and waiting for more certainty. Each becomes its own little ecosystem, and before long you’ve got a system that can create real fragmentation. It’s not because of any single decision, but because leaders are operating from different assumptions about what’s possible and as described in our previous article, come to the table with fully formed strong opinions.
Leaders Watch Each Other, Too
Leaders aren’t just influencing their teams downward. They’re constantly calibrating to each other sideways, watching what their peers are prioritizing and where the energy is flowing.
When a skeptical leader voices doubt to their direct reports, those employees nod along. But put that same leader in a room with a peer who’s already getting results? They now have to defend their position. It is a much different dynamic.
Not because anyone’s challenging them directly, but because their peer leaned in early and is getting traction. The finance VP got excited about the possibilities, and their team is now cutting reporting time. The operations director dove in and has concrete wins to show. These aren’t hypothetical benefits anymore. They’re real outcomes from people at the same level dealing with the same organizational constraints.
The skeptic realizes they’re not arguing against AI anymore. They’re arguing why their department should stay put while everyone else moves forward. That’s a different conversation. The question shifts from “Does this work?” to “Why isn't this working for us yet?”
The same survival instinct that makes direct reports watch their leaders kicks in here too. Just like employees don’t want to step out on a limb when their boss is skeptical, leaders don’t want to be misaligned when they see their peers experimenting and winning. Standing still starts to feel riskier than moving forward.
Cross-Pollination Breaks the Pattern
The most effective lever we’ve found isn’t more training or better documentation. It’s deliberately creating opportunities for leaders to hear from each other, especially leaders who are approaching things from different perspectives.
When you get other leaders from different departments in the same conversation sharing not just polished case studies, but the messy, in-progress stuff that’s starting to work. The more cautious leaders tend to moderate their skepticism.
We saw this with one leader who’d been hesitant about AI from the first touchpoint. They weren’t opposed, just not convinced it was ready for the complexity of their work. In a 1 on 1 with that leader’s direct report, I heard the employee mirror the tone and the language and even use the exact phrasing used by the skeptical leader. The culture had been pushed down from the top, and the employee was doing the very thing that can make organizations successful: pushing the vision of the leader forward. But in this case, accomplishing the leader’s vision meant continuing to use trusted tools, rather than take a chance on AI-enabled approaches.
Then the cross-pollination happened. One successful leader walked through what their team had been discovering with specific examples and small wins. It was real action that was starting to move work differently. The skeptical leader had questions and voiced their concerns, but the case was made for the importance of this moment. This wasn’t a referendum on one department's specific workflows. It was a pivotal moment for the company’s entire AI strategy and whether leadership was aligned on moving forward.
You could see something move.
Within two weeks, that same leader was one of the strongest voices for moving forward. It wasn’t because anyone argued them into it. When you see people digging in and making change work, staying skeptical starts to look like the riskier choice.
The Takeaway
AI adoption is view as mainly a technical challenge, but that’s usually the straightforward part. The harder work is understanding how change moves through an organization. It’s how people follow patterns they can observe, how influence flows in multiple directions, and how attitudes can send a signal about whether AI is something worth investing in.
If you want momentum to pick up, look for ways to break down the silos. Create opportunities for leaders to see what their peers are discovering. Give people a chance to update their assumptions based on what's actually happening, not just what they think might happen.
Because ultimately, adoption doesn’t spread through tools or training decks. Culture spreads through people.
Up Next
Next we’ll look at Lesson 6: Copilot Is the First Step, Not the Destination. As we begin to wrap this article series on lessons learned from our Copilot Catalyst rollouts, we’ll shift our focus slightly to put the spotlight on some broader themes with AI adoption. These are fast changing topics that leaders need to keep their eye on as they take their first steps toward building an AI enabled organization.
If you're in the middle of this, or about to be, take what helps, ignore what doesn't. These lessons are meant to be used, not just read. And if you can't wait for next week's deep dive, then feel free to reach out. Our team at FlexPoint Consulting is always happy to chat about everything we have learned.
If you think I have left out an important lesson or have something to add to one of these outlined above based on your own experience, let me know below in the comments.