Breaking Through with AI: Moving Beyond the Myths to Real Adoption

Adobe Firefly: Curt Doty

A lot of talk about “AI adoption” sounds inspiring on stage or in slide decks—but it rarely translates into lasting behavior change on the job. If you want AI to become part of your organization’s DNA, it’s time to let go of some popular but misguided approaches and focus instead on the reality of how people work and learn.

What Doesn’t Work

1. Employee Use Cases

Yes, it’s great to hear how Sarah in Marketing automated a report or how the Finance team shaved hours off a budgeting cycle. But storytelling alone doesn’t equip others to act.

Why? Because those use cases are often too removed from another team’s daily work. People return to their desks on Monday inspired—but with no clue how to apply those lessons to their own tasks, systems, or challenges. Inspiration is not instruction.

2. Internal AI Champions

Enthusiastic employees can demonstrate how they personally use tools like ChatGPT. But there’s a big difference between showing and instilling new habits.

Most people technically know how to open ChatGPT. What they lack is the instinct to reach for it at the right moment, in the flow of their work. Behavior change requires more than enthusiasm—it requires modeling, repetition, and context-specific coaching. Fellow employees often aren’t trained to deliver that.

3. Hunting for “Good Use Cases”

Many companies waste time trying to guess the “best” AI use cases for each team. They brainstorm theoretical tasks AI could help with, as if reading employees’ minds.

Here’s the hard truth: People rarely extrapolate from generic examples. Tell someone that AI can draft emails, and they won’t necessarily think to apply it to their complex project proposals or technical memos. The leap is too big.

Adoption comes from starting with the work people are already doing—not from top-down lists of hypothetical AI tasks.

4. Simply Giving Access to AI Tools

Providing access to AI platforms is like handing out free gym memberships: the gesture feels good, but it won’t improve anyone’s health unless they build new habits.

Just putting tools on people’s desktops or in the browser bar doesn’t equal adoption. Without clear integration into daily workflows, AI becomes yet another tab left unopened.

What Actually Works

If you’re serious about embedding AI into your organization, focus on the fundamentals of behavior change—not just technology deployment.

1. Build AI into Daily Routine

AI is not a specialized software skill. It’s a capability you develop through frequent use, like speaking a language. The real key: treat AI as your colleague or co-pilot.

Don’t overthink it. Talk to AI in natural language, just as you’d brief an assistant or bounce ideas off a teammate. The more you use it, the more second-nature it becomes.

2. Forget the Prompt Cheat Sheets

Prompt libraries sound useful—but they often miss the mark. They’re like reading a script of lines you could say to a coworker, instead of just speaking like a human.

These cheat sheets often fail because they’re too generic, or completely unrelated to your industry, clients, or deliverables. Skip the scripts. Just talk to AI conversationally, explain your context, and iterate together.

3. Converse, Don’t Command

Many people treat AI like a search engine: they type a single prompt, hit enter, and expect a perfect answer. That’s not how it works.

AI thrives in dialogue. Ask follow-up questions. Clarify. Revise. Provide context. Think of it as a brainstorming partner, not a vending machine. Adopting this conversational rhythm is one of the biggest mindset shifts people need to make.

4. Start With What You Know

Don’t try to dream up new AI projects out of thin air. Instead, look at your existing work and ask:

• Where am I writing, analyzing, summarizing, or researching?

• What repetitive tasks drain my time?

• Where do I need a second set of eyes or fresh ideas?

Pick a past project or an ongoing task and replace a few steps with AI support. That’s where the magic happens—not in theory, but in the reality of your workflow.

The Bottom Line

AI adoption isn’t about rolling out a new technology—it’s about cultivating new habits and ways of working. Companies succeed when AI becomes support for the work people are already doing, rather than an extra tool they have to remember to use.

The goal is to integrate AI so seamlessly that it feels intuitive—like reaching for your phone or collaborating with a teammate. Over time, this empowers teams to build personalized tech stacks and workflows that truly enhance productivity and creativity.

Adopt and Thrive

If your organization is ready to move beyond shiny tools and start building an AI-powered culture, RealmIQ can help. We focus on mindset first, then scale training programs tailored to your unique business, people, and workflows. Keep it human-centered.

Let’s turn AI into everyday capability—not just another tech rollout. Check out our services.

About the Author

Curt Doty, founder of CurtDoty.co, is an award winning creative director whose legacy lies in branding, product development, social strategy, integrated marketing, and User Experience Design. His work of entertainment branding includes Electronic Arts, EA Sports, ProSieben, SAT.1, WBTV Latin America, Discovery Health, ABC, CBS, A&E, StarTV, Fox, Kabel 1, and TV Guide Channel.

He has extensive experience on AI-driven platforms MidJourney, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT, Perplexity, HeyGen, Descript and OpusClips. He also runs his AI consultancy RealmIQ and companion podcast RealmIQ: Sessions on YouTube and Spotify.

As a new writer, he released his first novella Griffin and the Dark Secret on Amazon under his imprint MediaSlam Press and is working on the second installment Griffin: Future Past.

He is a sought after public speaker having been featured at Streaming Media NYC, Digital Hollywood, Mobile Growth Association, Mobile Congress, App Growth Summit, Promax, CES, CTIA, NAB, NATPE, MMA Global, New Mexico Angels, Santa Fe Business Incubator, EntrepeneursRx, Davos Worldwide, PRSANM, Robert Half, and AI Impact. He has lectured at universities including Full Sail, SCAD, Art Center College of Design, CSUN and Chapman University.

He currently serves on the board of the Godfrey Reggio Foundation and is the AI Writer for Parlay Me.