Your CEO won’t lay off the ‘How is your team using AI’ bullet point during your 1:1s.

It’s the fifth time your CEO has asked you how your team is using AI. You give him examples of how they’re using AI, most of those examples are from one of your direct reports. He seems pleased. But, you don’t leave that meeting as pleased as him. 

Your peers, other marketing leaders, are parading their wins on LinkedIn by leveraging agentic marketing agents to exponentially increase output of their teams, therefore creating more value for their companies.

You know this is cringe. But there is always 2% truth to what those people are gushing about on LinkedIn. 

So, what can you do to get your team to use AI in their work? If you’re thinking about Slacking that direct report to ask them to show the team how to use AI, stop! 

Hold up a mirror to yourself and ask, “Am I practicing what I’m about to preach?”

The only thing cringier than a self congratulatory LinkedIn post is fumbling a question you should have nailed. So, before you recite to your team the reasons to use AI from the great and good book of ideas written by your CEO, you need to learn a few things.

From my perspective as a product marketer and full stack marketer who has applied AI in my work, I would expect my boss to know the following:

1. How mainstream tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity compare

2. How to use these tools to automate basic admin work like reviewing meeting transcripts, organizing notes and action items, and catching up on colleagues' work (e.g. MCPs connected to Slack, Notion, Google, etc)

3. Has their own point of view on what AI should and shouldn’t be used for

Now that we've confirmed that you know the basics and you have formed your own point of view about AI, let's map out what your team should do with these tools.

Your team is on a journey, offer them a compass.

I’m going to be honest: This section is boring, but it’s important. I've seen work stalled for weeks because people were waiting for permission and lacked the words to ask for it. We’re going to write your AI charter. Don’t skip this part.

Here are 3 tasks you need to do before announcing to your team that AI will be a bigger part of their work:

1. Define what AI can and can't be used for

2. Spell out which data can't be shared with LLMs. Customer contracts are a usual no-no

3. List approved tools, and champion your team when they're ready to experiment with new ones

Your AI charter is the gospel your team returns to when they hesitate, and that saves them time.

Remember that Slack message I asked you to not send yet? Let’s discuss why.

You’ve learned a thing or two about AI and you’ve created your AI charter. Surely you’re ready to kick things off, right? Well, no.

You're about to ask your direct report, who has probably spent nights and weekends learning AI, to package that for your team. They may be willing to do it, but doesn’t that sound unfair?

Before you bestow this task upon this soul, ask yourself 3 questions:

1. Do others on your team trust this person? Seems harsh, but you’re asking this person to shepherd your team, so they need to be credible. 

2. Does this task align with their career goals? This is important, because upskilling your team demonstrates growth to you and your peers during performance calibrations. This is good for you, them, and the business. 

3. Will you reward them? Will you give them an extra development budget, send them to conferences, or include this in their performance review? Make it easy for them to say yes.

If you can say yes to all three questions, you're cleared to finally send that Slack message. Go for it.

How do you make using AI not feel like a shitty extracurricular for your team?

You have your own point of view on using AI in marketing, you've created the rules of engagement with your AI charter, and you have one or two full stack marketers to help you steer.

Now, how do you make this feel like you’re guiding your team to a land of milk and honey, and not a place where they have to sow the land to get the results they were promised? Give them a goal, then you and your full stack marketer show up for everyone.

It’s time for a story:

I mentioned earlier that it's easier to rally your team around a single goal than telling them to use more AI in their work. That might work for some, but it won’t for most.

At a company I worked at recently, my marketing leader had their own point of view on AI, gave us a clear charter, and critically: They gave us a shared goal to achieve with the help of AI.

It was a goal we knew we could solve without AI, but could solve faster with AI: fix technical issues with our website that were holding back organic and AI search.

The result? Three sprints over six weeks tripled traffic to our site, which boosted lead generation.

What made me and my teammates so successful? It wasn't really about AI as much as it was about spotting tasks in our workflows we could speed up.

Finding the right problem and then challenging your team to solve it with AI will pay off in how they work. And the best part for you? You and your full stack marketers are there to unblock setup problems and encourage new techniques.  

Your team is using AI now, but how do you make it stick?

First, celebrate your team’s progress. Then credit them publicly for what they achieved, and privately thank your full stack marketer for helping guide the team. But how do you actually make this stick?

• Document your learnings together, in the open. It should include: What was built? What outcome did they achieve? Where did AI help? What data did it use? And what did they learn?

• Regularly brainstorm big bets your team can use AI to tackle, together or in their own work. Over time, your team will use primary data sources (e.g. NPS, CRM, transcripts) to solve problems that matter more to the business.

You did it. Now what do you do next?

So, here's my ask: Pick one thing from this post and try it this week. Write the charter. Ask yourself the three questions. Or just open Claude and fumble around for an hour before your next 1:1 with your CEO. It won't be pretty, and that's fine.

And if you get stuck, or want to argue with me about any of this, reach out on LinkedIn or my email (victorio.arellano@gmail.com). I've been the direct report on the other end of that Slack message, so I'm happy to help you write a better one.