The Floor, Stairs, Escalator, Elevator:
Reflections on the Jagged Edge of AI Adoption
The Jagged Reality of AI Adoption
I've been grappling with a question since the summer of 2022 when I first explored AI-generated imagery for our Furniture Bank campaign: Why is something with such transformative power experiencing such wildly uneven adoption?
The reality for nonprofit leaders is stark: AI adoption is painfully uneven and frustratingly slow. At Furniture Bank, I witness this daily—one team member redesigning workflows with AI while another refuses to use it for meeting summaries, despite having identical tools and training.
We tend to misdiagnose this problem. We blame the technology ("it's too complex"), the budget ("we need more resources"), or the individual ("they aren't tech-savvy"). But what if resistance isn't stubbornness, but a rational, instinct-driven response? What if we're trying to solve a technology problem when we're facing a crisis of human psychology and organizational culture?
After three years of watching friends, colleagues, and fellow nonprofit leaders interact with this technology, I've developed a framework that helps me (and I hope you) make sense of what I'm seeing: The Floor, Stairs, Escalator, and Elevator.
Every single one of us, when engaging with AI today, is on one of these four paths.
The Framework: Four Paths to AI Adoption
The Floor: Standing Still While the World Moves
I've watched brilliant, capable nonprofit leaders simply refuse to budge on AI. These aren't luddites—many are smart, strategic thinkers who've mastered other technologies. But with AI, they're completely paralyzed.
People on the Floor share specific traits. They tend to be what I call "High Fact Finders"—people who need comprehensive information before taking action. The problem? With AI evolving weekly, there's never going to be "enough" information to satisfy them. I've literally watched people request three-month research projects about tools that won't even exist in the same form three months later.
The tragedy is that while these folks stand still, the gap between them and those moving up grows exponentially wider every month. This is a risk to them professionally, and to the organization they are apart of.
The Stairs: The Painful Step-by-Step Approach
The Stairs people fascinate me. They're moving, but each step requires enormous conscious effort. They might take a workshop, try a prompt, attend a webinar—but nothing flows naturally. Every action requires external validation and motivation, and often the organization pulling them up the stairs with mandatory courses.
At Furniture Bank, our "Stairs people" often share certain traits—they're highly systematic (what I call "High Follow Through" types) who crave structure and linearity in a technology that's anything but linear. They need frameworks, checklists, and clear boundaries, but AI's capabilities keep spilling outside any box we try to put it in.
The Stairs can work—many of these folks make steady progress—but it's exhausting for them and resource-intensive for organizations supporting them. I've seen too many nonprofit training programs designed exclusively for Stairs people: step-by-step guides that become outdated before they're even published.
The Escalator: The Sweet Spot of Sustainable Momentum
The most successful AI adopters eventually find their way to what I call The Escalator—a state where initial effort leads to self-sustaining momentum. These people don't necessarily move the fastest, but their progress is steady and sustainable. An important wrinkle in this escalator is that the angle of the escalator is different for everybody. I know some people whose escalator is barely a 15-degree angle, and I know other people whose escalator is clearly at a 60-degree angle, almost an elevator. But they are on a sustained trajectory of self-development that is resonant with their learning styles as well as their interests.
What gets someone onto the Escalator? In my experience, it's rarely a training program. Instead, it's usually a "spark moment"—a specific instance where they see AI solve a real problem they care about. I've watched firsthand the spark moment showing NotebookLM, Deep Research, Agents in Cassidy, Gemini image generation, Gemini video generation, reading the right book, seeing the right podcast. There is no one course to force ‘the spark’ which makes it very hard for an organization to formalize getting people onto an escalator. I
The beauty of the Escalator is that it honors individual pace and interests. Some people move quickly, others slowly, but everyone keeps moving upward without the constant energy drain of the Stairs. For me at Furniture Bank, it's about progress over perfection. Seeing people on their own self-discovery and self-development is one of the best feelings I get these days.
The Elevator: Rapid Ascent with Its Own Challenges
The Elevator represents rapid, urgent adoption driven by high agency and a strong instinct to experiment. These people aren't just early adopters; they're pioneers who rethink established processes rather than just improving them incrementally.
Being on the Elevator comes with its own challenges. I've had to learn (sometimes painfully) that my excitement can overwhelm others. When you're riding the Elevator, it's easy to forget that others are still deciding whether to step off the Floor.
The Elevator crowd—often leaders with both autonomy and an appetite for experimentation—risk creating a "say-do gap" in their organizations. We enthusiastically announce AI initiatives without building the psychological safety and learning infrastructure others need to follow. I live here every day personally and I struggle to create the systems and supports to respect and empower those moving differently.
The Connection to Conative Strengths
What clued me in to this idea was collaborating with Tim Lockie (The Human Stack), who helped me internalize that 95% of AI adoption is about humans and only 5% about the tools themselves.
But I'm going deeper: 95% of AI adoption is about our internal wiring NOT the human.
Since 2014, I've been using a particular tool that I think provides a rubric for AI Adoption identification. I've found the Kolbe A Index to be incredibly insightful for understanding how individuals might engage with AI adoption initiatives. While there's a lot to say about Kolbe, and you can see it below, a little more of a primer. There are three major areas I'm seeing that depending on your team's makeup. The combination of their scores are going to really identify if your team is living on the floor, stairs, or likely are already on an escalator or elevator.
Fact Finder (Information Processing)
High Fact Finders (7-10): Their need for complete information before acting creates a particular challenge with AI, as the field evolves too rapidly for them to ever feel fully informed. They're most likely to remain on the Floor or cautiously take the Stairs.
Low Fact Finders (1-4): Comfortable with incomplete information and more willing to experiment, making them natural Escalator or Elevator riders.
Quick Start (Risk Tolerance & Innovation)
High Quick Starts (7-10): Their natural attraction to novelty and comfort with ambiguity makes them Elevator or Escalator people who eagerly embrace AI's transformative potential.
Low Quick Starts (1-4): Their preference for established systems creates resistance to reimagining workflows, keeping them on the Floor or Stairs unless external pressure intervenes.
Follow Through (Systematic Thinking)
High Follow Through: May need to see how AI fits into existing systems and processes before adopting.
Low Follow Through: Might jump enthusiastically into AI but struggle with consistent implementation.
What About Dan ?
My own Kolbe A™ Index results (5-4-8-3) explain my relationship with AI. With a high Quick Start (8), I thrive on change and experimentation, making me comfortable on the Elevator. My moderate Fact Finder (5) means I gather necessary information but recognize when to move forward without perfect knowledge. My moderate Follow Through (4) gives me balance between structure and flexibility.
I've observed this pattern with people I've met, hired, and worked with. When I look at where their AI adoption has been over the last three years, it lines up with their conative profiles. There's a correlation between Fact Finder, Quick Start, and Implementor scores and how people embrace AI adoption initiatives.
I created KOLBE Ai Adoption Risk PDF HERE —> CLICK TO DOWNLOAD.
Creating Personalized Paths to the Escalator
For 2026, my objective is to foster an environment where each individual can forge their own path, leveraging their unique conative strengths, rather than enforcing my preferred approach to AI adoption. Furniture Bank is committed to becoming an AI-forward organization, reimagining our work processes. Individually, organizationally and sector wide we have all been presented an opportunity to redefine how work is performed and, critically, to free up time and resources, enabling us to concentrate on activities with the greatest impact. These are my current thoughts that I think leaders like myself need to start considering when trying to accelerate AI adoption within their own organization. At a minimum, to get everybody onto their own personal Escalator:
Recognizing Diversity as Strength
Different conative profiles bring different strengths to AI implementation. High Fact Finders ensure we consider ethical implications, High Follow Through individuals create sustainable systems, High Quick Starts push innovation boundaries, and High Implementors ground our work in practical reality.
Designing Multiple On-Ramps
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to AI training, we must create personalized entry points based on a persons conative strengths:
For High Quick Starts: Provide "sandbox environments" where they can freely experiment with AI on low-risk projects.
For High Fact Finders: Offer focused case studies, concrete examples of success, and transparent explanations of how AI works.
For High Follow Throughs: Provide clear, step-by-step integration plans and role-specific guides.
For High Implementors: Emphasize hands-on workshops and physical demonstrations that showcase AI's concrete applications.
Building Balanced Teams
As you build your team intentionally look to creating cross-functional teams with diverse conative profiles to leverage complementary strengths that play well when AI Adoption is considered.
Teaching Conative Empathy
Help team members understand not just their own conative strengths but also appreciate how others naturally take action differently. I'm finding this is especially helpful for spotting the gaps when we start doing collaborative AI projects.
It's Not About Tech
I firmly believe AI adoption is primarily about human psychology, cognitive styles, and organizational dynamics rather than technological complexity. When leaders model engagement with AI (take the Escalator or Elevator themselves), they "call the elevator" for others by signaling it's safe to explore.
Creating catalyst moments—deliberate experiences that help people step onto their personal Escalator through demonstrations, small wins, and peer success stories—is crucial.
The Floor, Stairs, Escalator, and Elevator aren't just metaphors for AI adoption; they're reflections of our diverse conative profiles and the different paths we naturally take when facing transformative change. By understanding and honoring these differences, I believe we can help everyone find their upward path at a pace that works for them.
My urgency is to have everybody at least get onto their own personal Escalator—ensuring they are moving forward in their AI adoption journey in a way that aligns with their natural strengths. Because in this rapidly changing landscape, standing still is the only position that's truly untenable.
Why This Matters Now
I'll be blunt: I'm worried about our sector. While I'm meeting with some nonprofit leaders excitedly redesigning their operations with AI, I'm watching so many others embracing The Floor . This isn't just about falling behind—it's about failing our missions.
Each person stuck on the Floor represents unrealized potential for the communities they serve. Every hour spent on tasks that AI could handle is an hour not spent on the human connections that truly drive impact.
What keeps me up at night isn't whether nonprofits will adopt AI—they will, eventually, because they'll have no choice. What worries me is how many will wait until they're forced to play catch-up, burning precious resources in panic mode rather than thoughtful integration.
I've seen this play out before with other technologies. The nonprofits that embraced digital transformation early are thriving today. Those that resisted until the last moment are still struggling with basics while others innovate.
The Floor, Stairs, Escalator, and Elevator aren't just metaphors—they're honest reflections of where each of us stands. My question to fellow nonprofit leaders is simple: Where are you, and where is your team? And what will it take to get everyone moving upward?
Because in this rapidly changing landscape, standing still is the only position that's truly untenable.
