BECU built 46 new AI workflows, in just 6 weeks. How did this happen? This represents hundreds of hours of potential time savings.
BECU’s head of AI strategy & innovation, Nadim Homsany, gave our team at Irrational Labs a very real challenge: Get AI out of the interesting-tool bucket and into actual weekly work.
More results from over this 6 week period:
- Weekly time savings rose from 3.75 to 5 hours
- Champion confidence increased 24%
- BECU’s prompt usage increased 27% per user and active days increased 14%
This was a custom intensive program for ~70 BECU Copilot Champions across 5 business units.
Before designing the sessions, we interviewed BECU staff about their actual workflows. Then we customized the hands-on exercises around the work people already did every day. “Use AI More” is too generic and people tune out. We needed to deeply understand how each function could get the most leverage.
We found three barriers that we have seen show up in almost every AI rollout:
- Confidence: Every organization has early adopters – people who are way far ahead. Everyone else feels like they are keeping their head above water. But just keeping your head above water is still a lot of work in this day and age! These folks can lack the confidence to fully lead, since they feel behind (don’t we all?)
- Norms: What’s a priority? Ai could theoretically help with everything, but with limited time, people crave focus. What are the specific workflows that should be disrupted? Once there is momentum (and norms) to change a certain thing, the org can rally.
- Clarity on policy: This is the least sexy but most important. Not everyone has access to everything. Different license types can make it difficult for internal champions to scale their solutions.
So we designed for those barriers directly.
- We built confidence with hands-on practice.
- We created shared norms with prioritization exercises
- We created more clarity on policy
One thing surprised us: the fastest progress came when people had agency over which workflow they improved first.
In the hands-on exercises, we gave people 3 paths: Copilot in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. They picked where to spend their time. Choice helped drive commitment.
Then we added more behavior change juice:
- Demo days, so the work became visible.
- Team rollout playbooks, so Champions had accountability
- Practice time, so it was not theoretical.
- OMFG examples, so people could actually feel what was possible.
- Hats off to BECU. They gave their people permission, structure, and public moments.
Obviously you need to give your team AI licenses. But you also need to give them the license to do the work and BECU did that.
Want help from Irrational Labs increasing AI adoption or effectiveness in your org? Email me: [email protected]
Congrats to the team also! Karl Purcell Magda Bober Ryan R. Goble Ed.D.Richard Mathera Harrison Neuert Kelsi Colombi