Here's something that might be happening in your organization right now.
A staff member figured out that ChatGPT can draft member communications in minutes instead of hours. Another discovered Claude can summarize board documents faster than they ever could manually. Someone in your events team is using AI to generate session descriptions, attendee emails, maybe even speaker outreach.
They're not telling anyone.
Researcher Ethan Mollick coined the term "secret cyborgs" to describe workers who use AI privately but don't share it with their organizations. The data is striking: while only about 20% of workers use official company AI tools, over 40% admit to using AI on their own. That means roughly half your staff may have discovered significant productivity gains with AI. And they're keeping it to themselves.
Sidecar's research on associations puts numbers to the disconnect:
"Your team members are quietly achieving 2-3x productivity gains with AI, cutting tasks that used to take hours down to minutes. But when you zoom out to the organizational level? Your association might be seeing 10-20% improvement at best."
Read that again. Individual gains of 2-3x. Organizational gains of 10-20%.
That's not a technology problem. That's an organizational problem.
Why would someone hide a productivity breakthrough from their employer? It sounds counterintuitive until you think about it from their perspective.
Fear #1: "If I show them AI can do my job in 3 hours instead of 40, will I have a job?"
This is the big one. Staff members have watched the headlines about AI replacing workers. They've done the math. If they reveal that AI lets them complete a week's work in a day, what happens to them? From a self-preservation standpoint, the rational response is to keep quiet and pocket the extra time.
Fear #2: "If I reveal my productivity gains, they'll just give me 3x more work."
Even if job security isn't the concern, workload is. Many employees have learned that efficiency gets rewarded with more tasks, not more recognition or flexibility. Why volunteer for a heavier load?
Fear #3: "Why share my innovations if there's no upside for me?"
There's often no clear reward for sharing productivity discoveries. No bonus. No promotion path. No recognition program. So the innovation stays siloed with the individual who found it.
Kim FitzSimmons, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at the American Association of Endodontists, described this dynamic from her own organization:
"One of the most revealing moments was realizing how many people were quietly using AI but didn't feel comfortable saying so."
Staff felt that using AI was "cheating" or somehow diminished the authenticity of their work.
This matters more than most leadership teams realize. When AI productivity stays trapped at the individual level, your organization misses:
BCG's research shows the gap clearly: organizations that simply deploy AI tools see 10-15% productivity gains. Those that redesign workflows around AI capabilities see 30-50% gains. The difference is whether AI remains an individual hack or becomes organizational transformation.
So how do you get secret cyborgs to come out of hiding?
Address the fears directly. If your staff thinks AI efficiency will cost them their jobs, they'll never share what they've learned. You need to articulate a clear position: Is AI about doing more with the same team? Redeploying people to higher-value work? Be explicit.
Create safe spaces for sharing. The Morton Arboretum created an "AI Explorers" program with judgment-free, collaborative spaces for staff to experiment with ChatGPT, Claude, and other tools. As their Director of Knowledge Management put it: "Demystifying AI allows non-technical people to see themselves as valuable contributors to technology strategy."
Reward the sharing, not just the finding. If there's no upside to sharing innovations, they won't be shared. Consider recognition programs, innovation bonuses, or simply making "teaching others what you've learned" part of performance conversations.
Make it okay to have been using AI all along. Some staff may feel sheepish about their secret AI use. They worry it looks like "cheating." Give them permission to come forward without judgment. You want their knowledge, not their guilt.
Start with pain points, not mandates. The American Association of Endodontists took a practical approach: each department identified one real pain point where AI could make measurable impact, then built pilots around those specific needs. This makes AI adoption feel like problem-solving, not compliance.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: if your organization is seeing only modest AI gains, the problem probably isn't your technology. It's not your budget. It's not even your staff's capabilities. It's whether you've created the conditions for individual breakthroughs to become organizational transformation.
The associations that figure this out will be in a fundamentally different position. They'll unlock the 2-3x individual gains and turn them into real organizational capability. The ones still stuck at 10-20%? They'll keep wondering why AI isn't delivering.
The secret cyborgs are already in your building. The real question is whether you've built an organization that can learn from them.
This is the second post in our "Strategic Window" series on AI investment for associations. Previously: "The 10% Framework: A New Way to Think About Association Reserves." Coming next: "What Associations Are Actually Doing With AI: Implementation Examples from digitalNow."
For the complete framework and supporting research, download our white paper: "The Window Is Open: A Framework for Deploying Association Reserves into AI Transformation."
About the Author
Johanna Kasper Snider is the CEO of Blue Cypress. Blue Cypress is building the AI ecosystem that helps associations transform how they serve members—with a bold goal of making associations as powerful as Fortune 500 companies by 2030. The Blue Cypress family includes AI products like Betty, Izzy, rasa.io, Skip and SoundPost; services companies Cimatri, Elastik Teams, and Tasio; Sidecar for AI education; and Blue Cypress Consulting for strategic transformation. BC Labs incubates and launches new AI solutions for associations. Johanna has over a decade of experience in SaaS and professional services, holds a BA and MBA from Tulane University, and is a contributor to "Ascend: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations."