How Zapier rolled out AI org-wide: Our playbook to driving 89% adoption

Summary

Summarized wtih ChatGPT

Zapier successfully integrated AI into its workplace, achieving 89% adoption among employees by fostering curiosity and encouraging hands-on experimentation through hackathons. They built a supportive culture and shared resources to make AI accessible to all teams, which transformed workflows and boosted productivity. This approach emphasizes collaboration, rapid prototyping, and continuous learning to embed AI into everyday tasks.

Key Takeaways:

1. Cultivate curiosity and urgency about AI in your organization.
2. Run regular hackathons to encourage hands-on experience with AI.
3. Foster a culture of collaboration and shared learning across all teams.

Highlights from Article

We issued Zapier’s first-ever “Code Red.” Not because we had all the answers. But because we knew standing still was the only certain losing move. We didn’t frame it as a polished rollout. We told the truth: AI was here, and it was going to change everything.

• Created urgency for AI adoption

The message was “Everyone, let’s get hands on keyboards. Build something real to develop a sense of what is possible with AI. Learn together.” The hackathon and our other activities promoting AI worked. Usage surged. But more importantly, the AI builder mentality stuck.

• Hackathons helped people see AI but not really use it all the time.

Enablement: We published a central AI Enablement knowledge hub so people knew how to get started. Bryan recorded developer-focused Looms. People could self-serve, but with structure.

We didn’t try to boil the ocean. We had a two-pronged approach: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down was narrow. We focused on a few places we felt were critical to update product capabilities with AI. Bottom-up, we encouraged small teams to move fast, iterate quickly, and share openly. We focused on real use cases that helped people in their daily work. Channels like #fun-ai became hubs of shared learning. We spun up AI working groups, ran live demos, and hosted internal Q&As.

• Internal sharing of use cases with examples plus finding a few places in product

In all-hands, hack weeks, demo sessions, and Slack threads we’d find places to encourage and reinforce why AI use was critical now.

We launched internal groups to share use cases, tips, and working examples. We enabled tools like Cursor to accelerate dev workflows. We held builder sessions at our team retreats. And we got serious about embedding AI into real workflows to automate internal business-critical work.

Make it a company initiative. AI can’t live in one team. If it’s going to transform your org, it needs to be part of your operating system. Your best unlocks will often come from the edge, not top-down.

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