7 Step Leadership : Adopting AI in Gov

The hum of "Artificial Intelligence" is everywhere. It’s in news headlines, ministerial briefings, and industry presentations. In the corridors of public service, where tradition provides stability and change is measured in years, this hum can sound like distant, irrelevant noise. For many, the default response is to wait—wait for a mandate, wait for a central policy, wait for someone else to go first.

But what if that’s the wrong approach? What if, buried within the hype, lies the single greatest opportunity of your career? An opportunity not just to modernise a process, but to fundamentally reshape the value your team delivers to the public. An opportunity to become the leader who didn’t just talk about innovation, but who masterfully and ethically wove it into the fabric of your organisation.

This is not a guide for technologists. This is a playbook for leaders—for ambitious managers who want to beef up their toolbox and become an AI Champion. It’s for those who understand that in government, the boldest move isn’t just to be innovative, but to be innovative responsibly. It’s about aligning groundbreaking tools with ironclad governance and compliance.

The following seven principles are your guide to not only navigating the AI revolution but leading it from within your own team, building a reputation for being the person who gets it done.

1. Start with : What Fire Are You Trying to Put Out?

The easiest way to fail with AI is to start with the tool. A director returns from a conference, declares, "We need a chatbot," and a solution goes in search of a problem. The project is destined for the digital scrapheap, becoming another cautionary tale that stifles future innovation. A true AI Champion does the opposite. They don't start with the technology; they start with the pain. They walk the floor, they listen to their team, and they ask the hard questions.

Before you ever whisper the acronym "AI," ask yourself: What is the single most tedious, soul-crushing task your team complains about? Is it the mind-numbing reconciliation of spreadsheets? The manual summarisation of lengthy reports? The endless triage of citizen emails, 90% of which ask the same five questions? These points of friction aren't just minor annoyances; they are resource drains that sap morale and steal time away from high-value work.

Now, imagine a different reality. If every member of your team suddenly had an extra 10 hours in their week, what strategic work would they finally tackle? Would they engage more deeply with complex community issues? Would they have the headspace to analyse policy from new angles? Would they finally clear that backlog that’s been damaging your agency’s reputation? By identifying the work that isn't getting done because of the work that must get done, you uncover the true cost of inefficiency.

This is where you find your "why." It’s not "to implement AI." It's "to free up 200 hours a month so my team can focus on complex case management." It's "to reduce the initial response time for citizen inquiries from 72 hours to 72 seconds." When you frame the mission this way, you aren't a manager chasing a shiny object. You are a strategic leader solving a real, painful, and expensive problem. That’s the kind of innovation that gets noticed, respected, and praised—not because it's flashy, but because it works.

2. Your New Digital Teammate: How to Augment, Not Annihilate

The moment you mention AI, a spectre appears in the room: the fear of replacement. Your team members—skilled, dedicated public servants—will inevitably wonder, "Is this machine being brought in to do my job?" Acknowledging and addressing this fear is your first and most critical leadership test. The narrative you build around AI will determine whether you are met with suspicion and resistance or curiosity and collaboration. The key is to banish the word "automation" and instead introduce the concept of "augmentation."

Frame the AI not as an autonomous robot, but as a powerful new colleague—a "digital teammate" or a "copilot" for every person on your staff. Its job isn't to take over, but to take on the tasks that humans are frankly overqualified for. The AI is the team member that can read 10,000 pages of historical documents in seconds and highlight the five relevant precedents. It’s the assistant that can listen to a recorded two-hour stakeholder meeting and produce a perfect transcript and summary. It’s the analyst that can scan a thousand pieces of public feedback and categorise them by theme and sentiment.

Now, ask your team to imagine their work in this new reality. How much better would your policy advice be if you spent 80% of your time on analysis and stakeholder engagement, and only 20% on data gathering? What new insights could you uncover if you weren't bogged down in the mechanics of research? This shifts the focus from what might be lost to what can be gained: expertise. You are freeing your people from the drudgery of the machine-scalable tasks to excel at the human-centric ones: critical thinking, empathy, negotiation, and strategic judgment.

By championing this vision, you transform from a manager implementing a system into a leader developing a team. You are signalling that you value your staff's intellect above their ability to perform repetitive functions. You are investing in making them better, smarter, and more effective. In a culture that is often slow to evolve, demonstrating a clear path to elevating your team's work and morale is a powerful and highly visible act of leadership.

3. Winning Hearts and Minds: Your Most Important AI Metric

You can have the most brilliant AI tool, a rock-solid business case, and flawless technical integration, but if your team doesn't trust it, they won't use it. At least not effectively. They will find workarounds. They will second-guess its outputs. They will view it as a burden, not a benefit. The most complex part of any AI implementation isn't the code; it's the culture. Winning the hearts and minds of your people is the only metric that guarantees long-term success.

Think about it from their perspective. When was the last time you were handed a new tool with minimal training and simply expected to adopt it? How did that feel? Often, technology is done to people, not with them. An AI Champion flips this dynamic on its head. You must over-invest in communication, transparency, and co-design. Start by holding open sessions where the only goal is to answer questions and listen to concerns. Be radically transparent about what the tool can and cannot do. Demystify it. Show them how it works, warts and all.

Even better, make them part of the process. How can you make your team feel like co-designers of this new workflow, rather than subjects of an experiment? Ask them to help identify the pilot project. Ask them to help test the tool and find its breaking points. Create a feedback channel where they can report issues without fear of looking incompetent. What if you created a "safe-to-fail" environment for the first 90 days, where experimentation is encouraged and mistakes are treated as valuable learning opportunities?

This people-first approach does more than just ensure adoption; it builds immense political and cultural capital for you as a leader. When senior executives see a team that is not only using a new technology but is excited and energized by it, they don't just see a successful project. They see a manager who can lead people through complex change—a skill that is rare and incredibly valuable. In the slow-moving culture of government, being the leader who can successfully navigate the human side of technological disruption will make you stand out as someone who can truly guide the organisation into the future.

4. Think Lab, Not Factory: The Power of the Pilot Project

In government, the cost of failure can be immense—not just in dollars, but in public trust and political capital. The idea of a large-scale "AI transformation" project is enough to give any seasoned public servant nightmares. It’s too big, too risky, too expensive. This is why the AI Champion avoids the "big bang" approach and instead adopts the mindset of a scientist running a controlled experiment. You don't build a factory; you open a lab. The pilot project is your laboratory.

The goal of a pilot is to de-risk innovation. It’s about making a small, calculated bet to gather data and prove a concept. The key is to choose your experiment wisely. Forget about solving world hunger in the first 90 days. Instead, ask your team: What is the smallest, most contained problem we could solve that would still deliver a noticeable, meaningful win? Perhaps it’s not overhauling the entire grant application process, but simply using AI to do an initial eligibility check on applications, saving each officer an hour a day.

Now, consider the worst-case scenario. If this pilot project failed completely, what would be the blast radius? Could you contain the impact to a single internal process and a handful of trained users? If the answer is yes, you have found a perfect candidate. A good pilot is one where failure is a low-cost, private lesson, but success is a high-impact, public victory. It’s a win-win proposition.

Before you begin, write the "victory memo" you hope to send in 90 days. What specific, measurable result would you be celebrating? It shouldn't be "we successfully used AI." It should be "we reduced the time to process initial correspondence from 48 hours to 4 hours, using the same number of staff." This discipline forces you to define success upfront. Running a series of these small, well-defined pilots creates a powerful narrative. You build a reputation not as a gambler, but as a pragmatic innovator who delivers consistent, evidence-based results. In a culture wary of risk, that track record is gold.

5. Your Guardrails for Greatness: Why Governance Isn't a Roadblock

In the private sector, the mantra might be "move fast and break things." In government, that’s a recipe for a front-page scandal. For a public service leader, governance, ethics, and security are not bureaucratic hurdles to be avoided; they are the essential guardrails that make innovation possible. Ignoring them is naive. Embracing them is strategic. An AI Champion understands that being compliant isn't a roadblock; it's their license to operate and the source of their credibility.

Before you even begin a pilot, you must become the most rigorous interrogator of the proposed solution. Start with the data. How do you ensure the data you're feeding the AI doesn't simply bake in the historical biases of the last 50 years? If you use an AI to screen résumés based on past hiring data, will it learn to favour one gender or demographic over another? Proactively addressing potential bias isn't just an ethical duty; it's a critical risk mitigation strategy.

Then, consider accountability. Could you confidently stand before a parliamentary committee or a media inquiry and explain why the AI made a particular recommendation that affected a citizen's life? If the answer is no, the system is too opaque. You need a "human-in-the-loop" at all critical decision points. You need audit trails. You need explainability.

Finally, you need an exit plan. Ask your internal experts: What is our 'break glass' plan? Who makes the call to turn the system off, and under what conditions? Thinking about this from the start is a sign of mature leadership. By engaging your security, privacy, and legal teams from day one, you reframe them from gatekeepers to partners. You aren't asking for permission; you are seeking their expertise to build a solution that is "secure and ethical by design." This approach is the ultimate career accelerant in the public service. Any manager can have a clever idea. But the leader who can deliver innovation that is also safe, ethical, and defensible is the one who will be trusted with the most important and sensitive challenges.

6. Beyond the Buzz: Proving the Payoff with Cold, Hard Data

"Transformation," "modernisation," "efficiency"—these are the buzzwords that echo through corporate plans and budget bids. But to senior leaders who have seen countless initiatives come and go, they are just noise. To be a credible AI Champion, you must rise above the buzz and speak the language of results. You must move beyond "innovation theatre" and become a master of proving the payoff. This means defining success, measuring it relentlessly, and presenting your findings with undeniable, data-driven clarity.

Before your pilot begins, establish your baseline and your target. If you couldn't use vague words like 'synergy' or 'optimisation,' what specific numbers would prove this project was a success? Get granular. Is it "reducing the average time spent on ministerial correspondence drafts from 7 hours to 3 hours"? Is it "increasing the accuracy of data entry from 97% to 99.8%"? Is it "a 40% reduction in staff-reported frustration levels with a specific process," as measured by a simple survey? These are not buzzwords; they are results.

As the pilot runs, your next question must be: What feedback loop will you create to hear directly from your team and stakeholders about what's working and what's not? Data isn't just about numbers on a spreadsheet; it's also about the qualitative experience of the people using the tool. Regular check-ins and open forums provide the context behind the numbers and help you iterate on the process in real-time.

Finally, you must be ruthlessly honest with the results. Are you prepared to recommend pulling the plug if the data shows the AI isn't delivering the value you expected? The courage to declare a pilot unsuccessful based on evidence is just as impressive as celebrating a win. It demonstrates objectivity and a commitment to responsible stewardship of public funds. When you go to your superiors, you won't be armed with anecdotes. You will have charts, baselines, and a clear return on investment. Managers who can articulate the precise value of their initiatives are the ones who are given bigger budgets, greater responsibilities, and the trust to lead the next wave of change.

7. You Can't Innovate Alone: Assembling Your AI Avengers

Even the most brilliant and driven manager cannot enact meaningful change in a silo. In the interconnected ecosystem of government, progress is a team sport. Attempting to launch an AI initiative without building a coalition of allies is like trying to sail a ship by yourself—you might be able to raise a single sail, but you'll never leave the harbour. A true AI Champion knows their success depends on their ability to identify, engage, and inspire a cross-functional team of partners from across the organisation.

Your first step is to map your stakeholders. Who are the three people in other departments whose support you absolutely need to make this happen? Your list will certainly include leaders from IT and cybersecurity, but don't stop there. Who in Procurement needs to be on board? Who is the key influencer in the Legal department? Who in Communications can help you shape the narrative? These are not roadblocks; they are your essential partners.

The secret to winning them over is not to just ask for their help, but to show them what's in it for them. How can you frame your pilot project so it helps your IT and security colleagues achieve their goals? Perhaps your pilot can serve as a model for secure cloud adoption that they can then use as a template for the whole organisation. Perhaps by engaging Legal early, you can co-create a reusable checklist for assessing AI vendors. You are not just bringing them a problem; you are bringing them an opportunity to be part of a pioneering success story.

Imagine hosting a "What If?" session before you've even chosen a tool. Invite these key partners to a room and brainstorm both the wildest opportunities and the most terrifying risks together. By making them co-conspirators from the very beginning, you build shared ownership. They are no longer just approving your project; they are defending our project. This ability to work across boundaries and unite disparate functions toward a common goal is the hallmark of a senior leader. It shows you understand the organisation as a whole and possess the influence to guide it in a new direction.

Conclusion: The Choice to Lead

The age of AI is no longer on the horizon; it is here. For government, it presents a fundamental choice: to be a passive observer, waiting for change to happen to us, or to be active architects, shaping how this technology will serve our communities.

The principles in this playbook are more than just a checklist; they are a mindset. They are a call to lead with curiosity over certainty, with collaboration over command, and with an unwavering focus on delivering real, measurable public value. Becoming an AI Champion isn't about being the person who knows the most about algorithms. It's about being the leader who can articulate a compelling vision, build a coalition of the willing, and navigate the complex human and ethical terrain with wisdom and integrity.

The future of government service won't be built by those who wait for permission. It will be built by leaders like you, who see a problem and have the courage to find a better way.

The only question left is: What fire will you put out first?