Last week at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Orlando,  a friend of mine — the head of AI for a multi-billion-dollar company — shared an analogy about AI adoption that I haven’t been able to shake.

He said leading AI transformation inside a large organization feels like whitewater rafting.

Everyone is in the same boat.
Everyone is hitting the same rapids.

But if you look around the raft, you’ll see four completely different human experiences happening at the same time.

1. There’s the person steering — exhilarated, energized by the challenge ahead.
2. There’s the person behind them — excited to be part of the ride, but gripping the paddle a little tighter than necessary.
3. There’s the person scanning the water — calculating, watching for submerged rocks, thinking about every place the plan could go wrong.
4. And finally there’s the person gripping the side of the raft — wondering why they ever agreed to get in the boat in the first place.

Same river.
Same raft.
Four entirely different realities.

That observation explains something many executives struggle to understand:

Most AI initiatives stall not because the technology fails, but because leaders assume everyone experiences the transformation the same way they do.

They don’t.

The anxious paddler needs permission to experiment.

The risk scanner needs to be in the room before the plan is finalized, not after.

And the person gripping the raft?

They’re often the ones who understand exactly where the system breaks, because they’ve spent years living inside it.

The mistake organizations make isn’t moving too fast.

It’s assuming everyone experiences the speed the same way.

I explored this idea in more detail — including the four personas that appear in nearly every AI rollout — in a new essay on Narrative Alchemy.

If you’re leading an AI initiative, or watching one unfold inside your organization, the human dynamics are often the real constraint.

You can read the full piece here:

→ Leading AI adoption through the rapids