Writing from Coreshift
AI in Business
What this year’s New Zealand research says about AI inside businesses — and what it means when you have forty staff, not four thousand.
New Zealand hasn't had an AI scandal. We're scared anyway.
When the worry is ahead of the evidence, the most reassuring thing in the room is a leader who does the same thing, the same way, every time, and says so.
4 min
77% of New Zealanders have used AI. 65% worry it will cost jobs. At least 42% are both.
Plenty of people don't fit either camp. They're using it, and they're uneasy about where it leads.
3 min
Half your team trusts you to keep people first as AI comes in. The other half is waiting to see.
Trust about AI isn't built by what you say once. It's built by what you do with the time it frees up.
3 min
Your people know what they need to learn. Only two in three say they're getting help.
The fear and the hope about AI sit in the same people. Leaders have to speak to both.
4 min
Most of your people are in the engine room. Fewer of them are getting help with AI.
Confidence with AI follows regular use. Regular use needs support, and support is going the wrong way.
3 min
The small businesses using AI are planning to hire
If AI isn’t the reason anyone’s going, someone has to say so before the silence says otherwise.
Part 014 min
Your best AI users are the ones hiding it from you
Fear isn’t costing you morale. It’s costing you measurement.
Part 024 min
You already have an AI training programme. It’s TikTok.
The question was never whether your people get AI training. They’re getting it.
Part 034 min
91% adoption. 4% impact. We’ve spent two years measuring the wrong number.
Ninety-one per cent is a procurement statistic wearing a transformation costume.
Part 044 min
Your AI bill is about to get uncomfortable. Capping it is the wrong lever.
The alternative to capping spend is knowing which spend is working.
Part 054 min
New Zealand’s biggest companies already wrote the AI playbook. It doesn’t work at 40 staff.
The brief is right and, as written, unexecutable. The interesting work is the translation.
Part 063 min
Every difficult conversation in your business now has a third participant
Your management decisions are now being reviewed for consistency, by something with infinite patience and no fear of you.
Every figure is attributed to a named source, listed under each piece.