Why Your Team Is Sabotaging Your AI Tools

44% of Gen Z workers admit to actively sabotaging their company's AI strategy. They're submitting bad output on purpose. Leaking data into public tools. And 29% of ALL workers are doing this.

The easy take: they're afraid of losing their jobs. But that's not the real problem.

The real problem is the Control Trap. When you build an AI workflow, you're encoding YOUR brain into the system—then handing it to your team. You didn't ask how they work. You built it based on how YOU think it gets done. Now you're asking them to run a process that doesn't match their reality.

64% of executives use AI more than two hours a day. Only 28% of employees do. That gap is the problem. Leaders are building, experimenting, getting good at AI—then pushing output down to teams who weren't involved. "Here's what I built. Go do something with this."

The team didn't learn anything. They got handed a black box and told to feed their job into it. Of course they're resisting.

Scott shares his own story: working at an optical chain, growing revenue 30%, then suddenly two consultants show up with no explanation. "Where are we going with this?" When leadership doesn't explain the why, trust breaks down. Same thing is happening with AI.

The fix: Involve your team in the build. They live in the chaos every day. They know where the friction is. That institutional knowledge is the gold AI runs on top of. When they help design the system, they understand what AI is replacing (the broken process, not them), they become owners of the system instead of subjects to it, and they learn AI alongside you.

You can't automate chaos. And you can't hand chaos to your team and expect them to trust what you built.

The bottom line: 44% sabotage isn't an attitude problem. It's a trust problem. Build WITH your team, not FOR them.

Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask