Free executive diagnostic
10 Ways to Make Sure Your Next Pilot Succeeds
A ten-part pre-mortem for internal AI pilots that work in the demo and disappear from the team's real workflow by Friday.
Britt Bowman LLC | Executive Diagnostic
10 Ways to Make Sure Your Next Pilot Succeeds
A ten-part pre-mortem for internal AI pilots that work in the demo and disappear from the team's real workflow by Friday.
Ship a pilot your team actually keeps using.
See the diagnosticOperating-readiness signal
A pilot succeeds when the new behavior survives after the demo.
The reframe
A pilot can be technically successful and operationally dead.
Internal AI pilots rarely fail because the model cannot produce an answer. They fail because the new capability never becomes the normal way the work gets done.
A strong demo proves possibility. Adoption requires ownership, workflow fit, incentives, trust, support, and a deliberate retirement of the old way.
The test is not whether people liked the demo. It is whether the capability survives contact with Monday morning.
The diagnostic
Pilot Adoption Pre-Mortem
A ten-part pre-mortem for internal AI pilots that work in the demo and disappear from the team's real workflow by Friday.
Start with a repeated moment of work
What to notice
The pilot solves an interesting problem that does not happen often enough to form a habit.
The trap
Choose the most impressive use case.
First move
Choose a frequent, painful moment with a clear trigger and user.
Name the user, not the audience
What to notice
The pilot is for a function, department, or everybody.
The trap
Invite a broad group to test it.
First move
Name the person, task, context, and decision the pilot supports.
Define the old way
What to notice
The team cannot compare the pilot with the current process because the current process was never mapped.
The trap
Measure only the new tool.
First move
Baseline time, quality, risk, and friction in the existing workflow.
Put it where the work happens
What to notice
Users must open another system, find the right prompt, or copy context into a separate interface.
The trap
Treat the extra steps as temporary.
First move
Integrate the capability into the existing trigger and system of work.
Design the exception path
What to notice
The pilot handles the happy path and leaves users stranded when confidence is low or context is missing.
The trap
Tell users to escalate as needed.
First move
Make human review, fallback, and exception ownership explicit.
Earn trust with visible boundaries
What to notice
Users do not know when to rely on the output or when to check it.
The trap
Train people to verify everything.
First move
State what the capability can decide, suggest, and never do.
Give one person adoption ownership
What to notice
Technology owns the build, the business sponsors the idea, and nobody owns daily use.
The trap
Make adoption everybody's responsibility.
First move
Name one owner for usage, friction, exceptions, and change decisions.
Measure behavior, not enthusiasm
What to notice
Positive feedback and demo attendance become evidence of adoption.
The trap
Survey sentiment after launch.
First move
Track repeated use in the target workflow and whether the old path declines.
Remove the duplicate process
What to notice
The new way is added while the old report, approval, or workflow remains mandatory.
The trap
Wait for organic migration.
First move
Set the evidence and date required to retire the old path.
Fund the operating change
What to notice
The budget covers the tool and build, but not process redesign, enablement, support, or governance.
The trap
Call those items change management later.
First move
Include the operating work in the pilot plan and decision gate.
Take this to your next leadership meeting
Five questions that expose the operating constraint.
Which repeated moment of work will this pilot replace or improve?
Who owns adoption after the launch team leaves?
What happens when the system is uncertain or wrong?
Which behavior will prove the new way has become normal?
What old process will be retired, and when?
From symptom to cause
Find the adoption constraint before you fund another pilot.
The pre-mortem shows what the pilot needs to survive. The BRIDGE assessment identifies the operating condition most likely to send the team back to the old way.
Continue to the full diagnosis
Your guide identifies the visible pattern. The assessment identifies the operating condition underneath it and the first intervention to sequence.
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