Bridging ITSM and Engineering Teams towards Coordinated AI Adoption
Without
Losing Ourselves
Before our story — yours
A quick show of hands.
Keep that person in mind as we go.
For me, that person was me
And I felt panic.
Friday, April 26
This is not that talk
Not what AI can do —
the human side of adopting it.
“But our situation is different…”
Service desk & ITSM aren't the exception — you're the driver.
You keep the organisation productive. That makes service desk & IT support how AI adoption reaches every department — not just by handing people tools, but by helping them make the change themselves.
You'll leave with a conversation to run with your team — and a way to turn it into a next step.
What it really felt like inside
An emotional rollercoaster.
Everyone on their own ride, moving at a different speed — and I was trying to help them while hanging upside down on mine.
The pressure from above
“Use AI in every project.”
“Scale without adding people.”
Excitement from shareholders and management became expectation, then a target.
What the engineers carried
Making sense of it · Bridges Transition Model
Every change dips before it lifts.
The part we don't name
Every change — even a good one — asks us to let something go.
Engineers were grieving their professional identity, their confidence in the craft, their old familiar work. In ITSM you're leading org change — a lot of hidden, undiagnosed grief.
You don't “get over” grief. With time, your life grows bigger around it.
The golden question
How do you help people move through grief safely — not stuck?
What we tried
Get all of us to admit — out loud, together — where we actually are.
The exercise
Hopes & Fears.
That hour, I fixed nothing. I just listened.
We aimed to answer three things
Everyone's cards on the table.
The best possible scenario
with AI in engineering.
The worst that could happen
because of AI in engineering.
What we'll really need
to reach the hopes — and move through the fears.
By the end
The fears filled twice the space of the hopes — that was the point.
What came after
None of it turned around in that meeting — it came later, in small things.
If only it was that simple.
From a blank board — four pathways
Four ways people move through the change.
The Generalist
The Craft Lover
The Pragmatic Delegator
The Wall
Strength
Interconnected, big-picture thinking — sees possibility everywhere and grasps it.
Saboteur · Restless
Chases every new thing; the excitement quietly tips into overextension. Risk: burnout.
The move
Guardrails on the enthusiasm — fewer things, deeper. They didn't need their fear fixed; they needed permission to move while still a little afraid.
“Not understanding every line is the job now. That's not you failing.”
Strength
Deep care for the craft, the patterns, correctness. High standards, real attention to detail.
Saboteur · Perfectionist + Controller
“It has to follow the rules exactly.” “Don't touch my code.” Underneath it is grief.
The move
Reframe the resistance as grief — don't push. Then redirect the perfectionism to a new object: the standards, the evals, the architecture the whole team's AI depends on.
“Your craft is what makes the AI good.”
Strength
Trusts AI, delegates fully, orchestrates agents, ships confidently. Went furthest, fastest.
Saboteur · Hyper-Vigilant
Threat-scanning, scarcity. The subtlest fear: “if I do this perfectly, I make myself disappear.”
The move
Take the scarcity off him — we removed the visible AI-spend limit and budgeted at project level instead. Then the real conversation.
“Your job isn't ending — it's getting bigger, and more important.”
Saboteur · Victim + Avoider + Judge
Knew exactly what to do, could describe the wall — could never start. Month after month, knowing didn't become doing.
The read — you can't tell from outside
fear · exhaustion · clarity?
The move — diagnose first, then respond
Clarity“I don't value this anymore” → help them exit with dignity. ExhaustionTreat as a burnout signal — a load problem, not an attitude. FearMake the unknown smaller — one concrete step — and be the steady presence.
You're on the same rollercoaster
“Afraid of losing my job”
→ “afraid for my people's jobs”
→ “what even is my job now?”
The Judge, the Hyper-Achiever chasing the OKR, the Controller tightening the roadmap — my saboteurs, too.
You can't be the steady presence if your own saboteurs are running.
The tools matter less than the people who wield them.
To win at AI adoption, support the people navigating reinvention — without losing themselves.
Take these home
Three key insights.
The Hopes & Fears blueprint
The exact format — so you can run it with your team next week.
Reframe resistance as an identity signal
Treat 1:1s as coaching. Diagnose before you label.
What changes when people feel heard
They redefine, together, what engineers are becoming.
Insight 01 The Hopes & Fears blueprint
The detailed step-by-step is the resource behind the QR at the end — fill in the quick survey and we'll email it to you.
Insight 02 Resistance is an identity signal
Treat 1:1s as coaching, not performance. Before you label something “resistance,” ask what the person is actually afraid of.
“I'll listen like I've been wrong.” Different diagnosis — different response; empathy and curiosity, not pushing.
Insight 03 What changed when people felt heard
They started redefining themselves —
in their own words.
One question, before we hand it back
If I could tell my panicking self one thing
The AI winners won't be the teams with the best tools.
They'll be the ones who help the people navigate change without losing themselves.
Two questions — that's all
Scan, and tell us.
Scan and you'll also get the Hopes & Fears blueprint — so this becomes something you do, not just a talk you heard.
Over to you
Yours are all different.
So — what do you think?
What applies, what doesn't, any doubt or question you're sitting with. That's the part we've been looking forward to.