Four numbers in the Blueprint every NZ business owner should read twice:

2.7% of our workforce are AI practitioners with embedded workflows.
97% are using AI superficially or not at all.
79% of employers don't know how to train their team.
90% expect to be using AI by 2028.

📡 The gap between "we use it" and "we use it well" is the whole story.

"People don't really put the truth on the internet. When you really discover the useful insights is when you actually have conversations with the manager who was implementing that strategy or doing that thing. You'll hear all about the challenges that were faced, what really happened behind the scenes, some really exciting wins that they weren't able to put in the report or some big challenges."

At the start of the morning one manager told me he doesn't do AI. Not interested. By midday he'd downloaded ChatGPT and was excited to give it a go. What 100 community services managers taught me about putting people before technology in an AI workshop.

A conversation with Scott Arrol about what it really takes to build trust and collaboration across a complex health ecosystem. Scott's career spans more than two decades across health, disability, community services, and technology. He moved from business ownership into health leadership at Radius Health Group and Kindercare, spent five years running community services at Healthcare of New Zealand, then led NZHIT for nearly seven years where he turned it into the peak body for NZ's digital health sector. From there he was chief executive at Dementia NZ and then MND NZ, before returning to HiNZ as conference programme director and then interim CEO for 12 months. He's now a Life Member of HiNZ and works independently as a freelance executive, director, and advisor, with governance roles across telehealth, disability, and digital health. The thread through all of it is the same: connecting people who don't normally talk to each other and building something that holds. This conversation explores how Scott thinks about ecosystem leadership, the human skills that hold a sector together, and what digital health can teach the rest of us about leading through complexity.

AI adoption in Aotearoa has moved fast. By 2025, over 80% of New Zealand organisations reported using AI in some form. That sounds impressive until you look closer. Among businesses with fewer than 200 employees, nearly half have no plans to adopt AI at all. And of those that have started, many are stuck in pilot mode: a ChatGPT subscription here, a Copilot licence there, but nothing connected to how the business actually runs.

New Zealand's AI journey is not primarily a technology story. It is a maturity story, and an increasingly urgent one.

The tools are racing ahead. Most organisations are not. Across hundreds of conversations with individuals and businesses throughout the country, and informed by recent research into how AI supports complex problem-solving and organisational knowing, a clear pattern has emerged: we already have access to world class AI models, but only a small minority are building the organisational muscles to use them wisely, safely, and distinctively.

An authentic exploration of human leadership and communication in a world awash with AI-generated content. Gabrielle Dolan ("Ral") brings decades of global experience in strategic storytelling to challenge how leaders and teams stay real, build trust, and use new technology to enhance, not erode their stories.