Your boss is living in a different AI reality than you are.
The data just proved it. Here is what to do about it.
In This Issue, we’ll cover:
→ What the data says about who is actually using AI at the highest level
→ Why the gap between you and leadership is wider than you think
→ What happens when that gap becomes visible in the wrong moment
→ The working session built to close it before it costs you
There is a conversation happening in leadership right now that most practitioners are not part of.
It is not about whether to use AI. That decision has already been made. It is about which people on the team actually know how to use it in a way that moves the organization forward, and which ones are still figuring it out.
A new report from Notion surveyed more than 6,000 workers across 10 countries to understand where organizations actually stand with AI adoption. One finding cuts deeper than the rest.
Owners and CEOs are more than six times more likely to be operating at advanced AI levels than individual contributors.
Six times.
That means the people deciding who gets promoted, who gets the interesting projects, and who gets let go when budgets tighten are not using AI the way you are using it. They are not using it to brainstorm or draft. They are using it to make decisions, build systems, and scale output in ways that are fundamentally changing what they expect from the people around them.
And most of them have not told you that directly. They do not have to. It shows up in the questions they ask in meetings. It shows up in the feedback that feels slightly off but you cannot name why. It shows up in the moment someone newer to the team answers a question faster than you did and you notice the room shift.
The Gap Is Not About Tools
This is not a story about who knows more software. The report is clear on that. The practitioners moving fastest are not the ones with the longest list of AI tools in their stack. They are the ones who have figured out how to use AI to do work they previously could not do, to make sharper decisions, and to communicate value upward in language that lands with the people who control resources.
That is a positioning skill. A communication skill. A career skill.
And it is exactly the kind of skill that does not come from a tutorial.
🟢 EVENT
Upskill AI: Repositioning For The New Economy
📅 July 23, 2026 · 12 to 4PM
📍 Silver Spring Civic Building, Silver Spring, MD
Four hours. Your actual resume, your actual pitch, your actual positioning, rebuilt in real time using AI tools and led by three founders who are operating at the level your leadership is already at.
Jake DiBattista · Founder & CEO, Buddy
Evan Katz · Founder & CEO
Yao Adantor · Founder & CEO, UXU
They have hired. They have been hired. They have repositioned themselves and built teams through this economy. They are not coming to tell you what AI is. They are coming to work with you on how you show up to a market that has already moved.
You leave with a finished output, sharper positioning, and one specific next step you chose before you walked out the door.
The gap between where leadership is and where most practitioners are is not closing on its own. Every week you wait is a week someone else in your organization is closing it instead.
📚 Resource Corner
→ The Great Renovation: Notion’s Global AI Transformation Report · The full data on where organizations and individuals actually stand with AI right now
→ 10 Best AI Resume Tailoring Tools in 2026 · Which tools pass ATS screening and which are overhyped
→ The 6 Best AI Resume Builders in 2026 · Free and paid options worth exploring before July 23
Final Thought
The distance between where you are and where leadership expects you to be is not a performance problem. It is an information problem. And information problems have solutions.