Measure
A short survey to your managers and their teams, plus a review of whatever usage data you already have. Eight minutes for managers, two for employees.
Your AI usage numbers are flat. Look at your managers first.
A three-week diagnostic that tells you whether the manager layer is why adoption stalled, what specifically is blocking it, and what to do about it in the next 90 days.
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One number is hiding the answer
You bought the licenses. You ran the training. Usage plateaued, and someone above you has started asking what the investment is returning.
Most organizations track AI adoption as a single figure for the whole company. That figure conceals the variable that explains it. Adoption is decided locally, team by team, and almost nobody measures that layer separately.
Managers set the ceiling
Permission, pace, and what gets rewarded all run through the direct manager. An employee's sense of whether experimenting is safe is calibrated to the person who writes their performance review, not to the CEO's announcement.
8.7x
How much more likely employees are to say AI has transformed how work gets done when their manager actively supports their team's use of it. (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026)
36%
The share of employees in AI-integrating organizations who say they have that manager. (Gallup, May 2026)
1-to-1
In a 2026 listening tour across ten organizations, the one company mature enough to measure adoption rigorously found that team adoption tracked manager adoption essentially one to one.
Three weeks, three phases
Understand
Confidential 30-minute interviews with five or six managers, sampled deliberately across your highest and lowest adoption teams once the data shows us where those are.
Deliver
A written report and a 90-minute readout.
What you get
Where your manager layer stands, with adoption mapped team by team
The two or three specific blockers holding it back, and which ones a manager can actually fix
A sequenced 90-day activation plan with phases, moves, and owners
Baseline metrics you can re-measure in 90 days to prove movement
A benchmark against Gallup's national data
The lift on your side
An executive sponsor, a roster of managers and teams, whatever usage reporting you already run, and about eight minutes from each manager. If your usage data isn't clean, the diagnostic can work without it.
Investment
$5,000 to $7,000
Fixed fee, depending on organization size, available data, and who fields the survey.
Who this is for
Organizations with eight or more people managers, where AI tools are deployed and usage has plateaued.
Who it isn't for
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Organizations with fewer than eight managers, where there simply aren't enough teams for the pattern to mean anything and a focused working session will serve you better.
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Anyone hoping to evaluate individual managers: results are reported in aggregate only, never below team-level thresholds. This is built to target support, not to score people.
About company
Barbara Roos is the founder of Trailhead Communications, an advisory practice focused on the human side of AI adoption. The manager adoption diagnostic is built on findings from a 2026 listening tour across ten organizations about where AI adoption actually breaks down.
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes to see whether this is a fit. If it isn't, I'll tell you and suggest what would serve you better.