The Four AI Archetypes: Finding Your Place on the AI Adoption Curve
The AI landscape is rapidly changing, and as business leaders, so must we.
Our latest talk breaks down the AI journey into manageable stages:
Bystander.
Conversationlist.
Automator.
Orchestrator.
Whether you're just starting or looking to revolutionize how your team works, there's a path forward. Learn how to transform fear into action and curiosity into expertise with our step-by-step insights. Listen in and find out where you and your team are on the AI-adoption curve.
#AILeadership #FutureOfWork #Technology
AI-shortened transcript
Nick: One of the things that we know people are struggling with when it comes to AI—because they're telling us—is that it seems so big, so all-encompassing, that it's really hard to think about from a strategic point of view. What you should be doing, what your team should be doing, what your business should be doing. It’s a bit "jab, jab, right hook," isn’t it?
Matt: Yeah.
Nick: You published a really interesting post on LinkedIn last week that I think gives us a useful framework for thinking about where we are—each of us individually and from a business point of view—on that AI adoption curve. And I thought it would be useful just to talk through those levels and see if we can help some people out.
Matt: Absolutely. I think it’s worth saying, just for context—Nick, you and I have spoken about this a lot—and I want to reiterate a little bit, because I think this is really important. I’m years old now. I’m living through a time where I’m seeing, genuinely, for the first time, a real worry and threat to the way I’ve been able to do my work for such a long time.
You know, I was a developer, I’m a user experience person, I’ve done a lot of product strategy—I’m not a junior person in the digital space at all. But every time I look at LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter, all I’m seeing again and again are these messages saying AI’s coming. It can take your job, it can do this, that, and the other. And I genuinely think to myself, “Oh my—crikey—how am I going to adapt to this?”
It’s scary, right? I feel fear.
Nick: Yeah.
Leaning Into AI
Matt: And as part of that fear, what I’ve been doing—as you know, what we’ve been doing together actually—is trying to lean into AI. Practical lessons that we, as older statesmen of the digital…
Nick: Some of us older than others, Matt.
Matt: …so that we can start to understand the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise. Because it’s not obvious. If you go onto Google or YouTube and ask, “What are the five most important impacts of AI right now?”, you’re going to get videos about "vibe," or how to use this niche tool some dude has vibe-coded—an AI tool that will, say, translate your company accounts. But you know nothing about the provenance regarding security and all that.
There is so much noise about what’s good and bad. It’s really hard to tell the difference. So we’ve been leaning into that from experience. We know how to assess good from bad in terms of…
Nick: Yeah, practical applications.
Matt: …practical application of these things. And what occurred to me was that I haven’t been able to find a very good framework for understanding where I am on my AI adoption journey. For example, if I’m just using ChatGPT to ask it questions—basically like a Google search—what does that mean?
There’s a woman called Allie Miller who’s one of the top voices on AI on LinkedIn. Really great—her webinars are amazing. But her work seems targeted very much to younger enthusiasts—millennials and Gen Zs. I’m a Gen Xer.
Her posts are great, but very much geared toward that audience. So I kept thinking: how do I understand my journey on this? She talks about an “AI-first mentality”—about using AI to change the way you work, not just to use AI. What does that mean?
If I’m using ChatGPT to analyze a spreadsheet and understand sales trends in the US, and ask it how tariffs will affect those sales—that’s still me using the tool to do what I’d normally do manually. I’m saving time, sure. But that’s not AI-first.
AI-first would be: a workflow that sees Donald Trump announce 50% tariffs on steel, then asks: “Do we work in the steel industry?” Yes. “OK, I’ll look at our sales forecast and tell the heads of department what the impact is.” That’s AI-first—it’s proactive, not reactive.
Nick: And it would be running in the background all the time. Not triggered—just alerting you.
Matt: Exactly. So what I’ve been trying to get my head around is: what are the gates or behavioral markers at each stage, so I know I’ve moved from being a basic user to being an AI-first individual?
Nick: Yeah. And it’s not just you, is it? There are lots of people working in companies—doing big work for big clients—who aren’t stringing together no-code tools. It's the complex work of business.
Matt: Right. And that’s what really got me thinking. There are lots of videos about how to use AI as a content accelerator. But there’s not much out there about how to use AI to be a better team leader or line manager. Those are harder use cases. They’re specific to most organizations.
The Four AI Archetypes
Matt: So we’ve got these four archetypes I call AI User Archetypes: Bystanders, Conversationalists, Automators, and Orchestrators.
Nick: OK.
Matt: Originally there were only three—Conversationalist, Automator, and Orchestrator. But I had a conversation with someone on LinkedIn who said, “I’m not interested in AI; it’s not solving any problem for me.” And I realized I’d missed out the archetype I myself had once been—what I call the Bystander.
Nick: Yeah.
1. Bystanders
Matt: At a high level, a Bystander is standing at the edge of the AI revolution, watching from a distance. They’ve heard of AI, maybe tried a chatbot, but it hasn’t stuck. They don’t think it’s relevant to their work. They might think it’s overhyped or unreliable. They feel a mix of curiosity, skepticism, and fear. What they need is clearer use cases—right now, AI feels like it’s for someone else.
2. Conversationalists
Matt: A Conversationalist uses tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot to ask questions, draft emails, brainstorm ideas. It’s one-on-one interactions in a chat window. The AI is a sparring partner or research assistant—it’s not embedded in any workflow.
Nick: Yeah, it’s separate.
Matt: Exactly. And the landscape is muddied—there are ads claiming AI can automate your life, but they’re promising things that ChatGPT alone can’t actually do. So, Conversationalists need to understand that these tools are like a keen but inexperienced junior employee—they might confabulate because they’re trying to give you an answer.
Nick: Yeah. Confidence is misleading—AI seems confident, and we fall for that.
3. Automators
Matt: The next level is Automators—people who design workflows where AI is a step in the process. We recently built one for a hotel chain to generate SOPs from vendor training videos. You use AI to summarize, translate, clean data, or serve as an FAQ bot. It’s not just chat—it’s embedded in tools and flows, often using Copilot Studio, Make.com, or Zapier.
For example: add a line in a Google Sheet to trigger ChatGPT to create a draft invoice in Xero, then alert you via Slack.
Nick: Yeah, that makes sense.
4. Orchestrators
Matt: At the Orchestrator level, you’ve got AI agents working proactively. I have one in my inbox—it watches for action-required emails and adds tasks to my to-do list automatically. It has a prompt like “You are a first-class personal assistant.” It checks email and uses tools to capture the task.
Over time, you build many agents—maybe a coding agent to create tools based on your brief. You’re not doing the work; you’re ensuring it gets done right.
Senior leaders need to move their teams from Bystanders and Conversationalists to Automators and Orchestrators. Because what AI can’t do well—and may never do—is provide the creative spark to ask: why are we doing this? That’s the domain of humans.
Nick: Yes—experience, creativity, empathy. That’s the rarefied space where we create value.
The Future of Work
Matt: There’s worry about what happens to junior roles. Anthropic recently said 50% of junior roles could disappear in the next three years. That’s scary.
Nick: Yeah.
Matt: But I think managing agents, workflows, and automations could create a new area of work. It might not be the same tasks, but new kinds of roles will emerge.
Nick: Agility and hard work will be the differentiators. It’s like writing—yes, AI can write, but thinking is what really matters. If you just use AI to write, you’re the same as everyone else doing that. But if you push harder, you can do more—coding, designing, prototyping. You can go farther, faster.
Matt: Totally agree. There’s this negative vibe-coding label out there. But the people using these tools are learning—just in a different way. They’ll be ahead of us if we don’t adapt. Leaders must remind their teams: if you’re taking 10 days to do something that AI can help someone else do in two hours, you’re falling behind.
Nick: Exactly. If you’re scared, you can run, freeze, or dive in. Freezing is the problem. Knowing where you are in this framework tells you the next step. And moving forward is the only option.
Matt: Couldn’t agree more.
Nick: Cool. Thanks mate. Speak to you again soon.
Matt: Will do. See you later.
