Vol.031 — AI Adoption Series: I’m telling my team to “use AI more.” Why are they confused, scared, and tired?
Date: 2026-05-20 | Newsletter
Key Summary
When business owners roll out AI and expect excitement, what they often get instead is silence, confusion, and quiet sabotage. Zenta spent a week reading the places where staff actually speak candidly — Reddit, Glassdoor, LinkedIn’s buried comment threads — and surfaced three patterns that repeat across ASEAN and beyond. First, confusion: “use AI more” is not a brief, and staff are genuinely unsure what compliance looks like. Second, fear: the rules have four punishing sides — use AI and get fired for it, don’t use it and get filtered out at the next review. A Writer/Workplace Intelligence survey found 29% of knowledge workers are actively sabotaging their company’s AI rollout, with fear of job loss the primary driver. Third, exhaustion: the early adopters — the ones who didn’t push back — are experiencing what Boston Consulting Group and UC Riverside researchers call “AI Brain Fry,” burning out on the cognitive overhead of managing tools 24/7. For Functional AI Partners, the lesson is operational: adoption is not the announcement. It is what the team does after. “Use AI more” without a specific brief produces input-theater, not results. Do it simple. Adoption is what your team does AFTER you announce it.