About this episode

Donna P. Mitchell discusses the gap between strategic technology adoption and the realities faced by frontline users, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety and frontline intelligence.

Two realities exist inside every transformation. One lives in the boardroom — strategic, funded, on track, with a dashboard full of green check marks. The other lives on the ground floor, where the people who use the technology every day already know it isn't working the way the dashboard says. In this solo episode, Donna P. Mitchell reads and teaches from Chapter Two of her book, Pivoting to Technology Adoption: Mind the Gap — "What People Know." She unpacks why frontline intelligence flows upward slowly and filtered, why "resistance" is almost always something else, and why psychological safety — not more mandatory training — is what lets the truth surface. Drawing on a career that began at the Bell System in 1977, Donna makes the case that the adoption gap is now higher-stakes than ever: in the AI era, ignoring what people know no longer just wastes money — it ships defective products and puts patient safety at risk. It was never the technology. It was the gap. TOPICS COVERED: - Why every transformation creates two realities — the dashboard and the break room - Why frontline intelligence arrives slowly and filtered - Why "resistance" is usually exclusion in disguise…

People in this episode

Host: Donna P. Mitchell

Topics covered

• technology adoption
• frontline intelligence
• psychological safety
• AI impact
• transformation realities

Keywords

• technology adoption
• dashboard
• break room
• psychological safety
• AI era
• transformation
• frontline intelligence

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bell System

Books & works: Pivoting to Technology Adoption: Mind the Gap

More episodes of Pivoting to Technology Adoption

• The Builder's Chair: What C-Suite Misses About AI Adoption · July 21, 2026 · 36 min
• The Leadership Operating System: Trust People, and the Profit Follows · July 7, 2026 · 26 min
• Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution · June 30, 2026 · 34 min
• The Dashboard Trap: When Technology Doesn’t Change the Business · June 16, 2026 · 40 min

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