Why 15 minutes
McKinsey's data shows that 82% of organizations are using AI, but most of them are stuck in pilot mode. One of the reasons: AI adoption gets treated as a top-down initiative with training sessions, tool rollouts, and strategy decks. What often works better is something smaller. A short, low-pressure conversation where people get to think out loud about their own work.
Fifteen minutes is enough to open the door. It's short enough that people don't feel like they're committing to anything, and long enough to surface real observations about where time gets wasted, where decisions feel slow, or where repetitive tasks drain energy.
How to set it up
Pick a team you work with regularly. This works best with 3 to 6 people. Don't frame it as an "AI workshop" or anything that sounds like a formal initiative. Just tell them you'd like to try a quick experiment: 15 minutes at the start or end of an existing meeting, thinking about one specific question.
Ask each person: "What's one task you do regularly that feels repetitive, takes too long, or where you wish you had a better starting point?" Let them think for a minute. Then go around the group and let everyone share one thing.
You're not looking for AI use cases yet. You're listening for pain points: writing the same type of email over and over, summarizing meeting notes, preparing reports from templates, sorting through data to find patterns. These are the moments where AI can actually help, and people often don't realize it until they say it out loud.
Don't try to solve anything in this first session. Just capture what people said. Thank them, and tell them you'll come back next week with one small experiment based on what you heard. That's how you build momentum without overwhelming anyone.
What you're actually doing
This is adoption work, even though it doesn't look like a formal program. You're creating a safe space for people to reflect on their workflow. You're surfacing the kind of information that no survey will give you. And you're positioning yourself as someone who can facilitate this transition thoughtfully.
Stanford's AI Index confirms that the biggest barriers to AI ROI are organizational readiness and resistance to changing workflows. This small exercise addresses both: it builds readiness by making AI tangible, and it reduces resistance by letting people define their own entry points.
Try this week: Pick one team meeting and add this 15-minute exercise. Bring a notebook, listen more than you talk, and capture the tasks people mention. You'll learn more about readiness in one session than in any technology assessment.