One of the first things we do with every client at Gadoci Consulting is stand up an AI Operators program. We call them operators, but you may know them as AI champions, AI ambassadors, or just "the people in each department who actually care about this stuff." Whatever you call them, the concept is the same: identify the 5-10% of your organization who are already leaning in, give them structure and support, and let them become the frontline drivers of AI adoption from the inside out.
If you've already stood up a program like this, you're ahead of most companies. This post is for you. And if you haven't, consider it. Because what follows is one of the most reliable indicators we've found for whether an AI transformation is actually taking hold, and it only becomes visible when you have a group like this meeting on a regular basis.
The indicator? Show and tell.
Early in the program, you leave time at the end of each meeting for people to share what they've been working on. Nobody volunteers. The room goes quiet. You end up filling the silence yourself, or you go behind the scenes before the meeting and nudge someone: "Hey, that thing you showed me last week, would you be willing to share it with the group?" They agree, a little nervously, and you coach them through it.
Months later, you can't get people to stop. The show and tell runs over. People are messaging you between sessions asking if they can present. You have a backlog. The meeting that used to end early now ends late, and nobody is checking the clock.
That arc, from coached silence to organic overflow, is the single clearest signal that an AI champions program is actually working. And getting there requires a kind of meeting structure that most organizations don't think about carefully enough.
Why the Meeting Matters More Than the Training
Most companies that start an AI champions program focus heavily on the training component. What tools do we give people? How do we teach prompting? What's our education curriculum? Those things matter. But the recurring meeting is where adoption actually compounds.
Training is an event. The meeting is a rhythm. It's where people report back on what they tried, where they see peers doing things they hadn't considered, where a marketing lead watches someone from finance demo a workflow and thinks, "I could use that for my reporting." That cross-pollination only happens when people are in the room together on a regular basis, with enough structure to make it productive and enough space to make it human.
We've run these meetings across organizations of different sizes, industries, and levels of AI maturity. The specific tools and use cases differ, but the arc of what it takes to get people from passive to active follows the same trajectory every time.
The Arc
The meeting series follows a natural progression in three broad phases.
It starts with foundation. The early meetings are heavily leader-led. You're defining the role, introducing a shared framework for thinking about AI solutions, and setting expectations. People are absorbing. They're learning the vocabulary. They're figuring out whether this program is serious or just another initiative that will fade. The quiet in these meetings is normal. Don't let it discourage you.
Then comes skill-building and structured discovery. This is where operators start doing real work. They're identifying AI opportunities in their departments, documenting them in a structured way, and bringing them back to the group. You start seeing early analytics on what the group has found. Workshops work well here, building something together during the meeting so people leave with a working tool, not just concepts. That shift from learning about AI to making something with AI changes the energy in the room.
The final phase is where the meeting stops being yours and starts being theirs. Named operators are presenting. Demos are coming from the group, not from you. Your role narrows to keeping things on track and curating the news and context that helps operators connect their work to the bigger picture. When the agenda finishes early, give time back. The meeting should feel like it serves them.
What This Looks Like When It's Working
The pattern we see is consistent. Early meetings are quiet, and the educational content fills most of the time. Then, gradually, operators start bringing things back. Someone shares a small win. Someone else sees that and thinks about how it applies to their department. A few meetings later, someone with no technical background demos a working tool they built on their own, and the group chat lights up with questions about how they did it and whether it could work for other teams.
That moment is never planned. It happens because the meeting has been structured, over time, to make that kind of sharing feel normal. And the next natural step is what we call an "operator takeover," where operators start leading the meetings themselves. People who months earlier wouldn't volunteer for a two-minute demo sign up to run the whole session.
When that happens, you've accomplished the hardest thing in AI adoption. You've made it self-sustaining.
The Signals
If you're running a program like this, there's a progression of indicators worth watching for.
Early on, it's workshop engagement. Are people doing the exercises or passively watching? Later, it's unprompted questions. When someone asks "could this approach work for my team's reporting?" they're thinking about their own work through an AI lens. That's the behavioral shift.
The strongest signal is inbound. When operators ask to present, when they share things in channels between meetings, when people outside the program start asking how to get involved. When adoption is pulling people in rather than requiring you to push, the program has its own momentum.
The One Thing to Protect
If you take one thing from this: protect show and tell. Leave space for it from the very first meeting, even when nobody uses it. That empty space signals what the meeting is eventually going to become.
Be patient with the quiet phase. It lasts longer than you want. Keep nudging behind the scenes. Keep celebrating small wins publicly. And when the meeting starts running over because too many people want to present, resist the urge to tighten the agenda. That's the sound of your program working. It's the hardest thing to manufacture and the easiest thing to accidentally kill.