Week 1. Rolled out to the ops team today. Nobody touched it except the two people who already wanted it before we even announced. Expected.
Week 2. Three more people logged in. One asked me privately if it was going to replace anyone's job. I said no, meant it, not sure they believed me.
Week 3. First real win. Someone used it to pull together a vendor comparison that would have taken half a day. Took twelve minutes. She told two other people about it unprompted. That's the thing that actually moves adoption, not the announcement, not the training session. One person telling another person something genuinely saved them time.
Week 4. First bad experience. Confidently wrong answer about a contract renewal date. The person who got the wrong answer didn't tell me. I found out because someone else mentioned it in passing. That's worse than if they'd complained loudly. Quiet distrust is harder to fix than loud complaints.
Week 5. Usage flat. Not growing, not shrinking. This is the week I almost called it a failure. Talked myself out of it. Flat in week five after a bad experience in week four is actually fine. The question is whether it's flat in week nine.
Week 6. Did something I should have done in week one. Sat with the person who had the bad experience and asked her to walk me through exactly what she asked and what she got back. Turned out the document she needed was never indexed. Not a model problem. A pipeline problem. Fixed the pipeline gap. Told her specifically what we fixed.
Week 7. She used it again. Worked. She told the person who'd originally told her not to bother. Trust rebuilt one specific interaction at a time, not through an announcement that we fixed something.
Week 8. Usage climbing again. Slower than week three's enthusiasm curve but steadier. I think steadier is the one that matters.
What I'm taking from this so far: the technical rollout took an afternoon. The trust rollout is taking two months and it's not done. Nobody warned me the second timeline would be so much longer than the first.
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