Everyone came out of the woodwork.

The situation

From our years leading AI adoption inside a national property consultancy: a 650-person firm, long history, leadership interested in AI but wary of it. Officially, almost nobody was using it. Unofficially, nobody knew.

What we found

The moment a clear governance framework landed, with a policy, a risk register, and a plain statement of what was allowed, people came out of the woodwork. Staff had been using AI quietly for months, most of them carefully and well. The firm hadn't been protected by having no policy. It had simply been blind, and the capability its own people had built was invisible, unshareable, and one resignation away from walking out the door.

What changed

Governance turned hidden use into visible capability. The careful users became the champions, their working patterns became the training material, and their tools became shared assistants doing real work across the firm. And the firm learned the number that matters in any professional services business: real change is carried by the 40 or 50 people who want it, given cover to lead, while everyone else follows the proof.

A firm without an AI policy doesn't have less AI use. It has less visibility.