AI Adoption & AI Compass
Most NZ organisations have an AI pilot. Fewer have AI capability. Even fewer have an objective view of where they actually sit on the AI maturity curve. AI Compass, our proprietary diagnostic, gives leaders that view, and Five's AI adoption services turn it into embedded change.
The hardest thing to see is where you actually are
Pilot fatigue is real, and it's expensive
Every executive team we meet has run an AI pilot in the last eighteen months. What most don't have is a defensible, board-ready picture of how their organisation's AI readiness stacks up today, how it varies between the exec team and the front line, or where the next dollar of investment will actually move the needle. In the absence of data, decisions get made on vendor hype, loudest voice, and whoever happens to be enthusiastic this quarter.
Readiness is not the same as usage
Licences are not adoption. Prompt counts are not value. A Copilot roll-out to every desk tells you almost nothing about whether the work has actually changed. The organisations getting real value from AI are the ones measuring the right things: strategic alignment, workflow redesign, cultural readiness, capability, and technology foundations. Those are the five dimensions AI Compass was built to assess.
Where Five comes in
AI Compass replaces guesswork with a clear baseline and a prioritised roadmap. From there, Five's AI adoption services translate the roadmap into change that sticks, using our existing partnership as WalkMe's first certified delivery partner in New Zealand, our senior consulting team, and our twenty-plus years of NZ transformation experience.
Introducing AI Compass
What AI Compass measures
AI Compass assesses AI maturity across five interconnected pillars: Strategy and Leadership, Performance, Culture, People, and Technology. The same five pillars Five applies to every transformation, now tuned specifically for AI readiness.
How it works
Phase 01: Assess. Role-tailored surveys capture perspective at every layer, Executive, Senior Leadership, Leader, and Individual Contributor. We see what boards see, what managers see, and what the people actually using AI tools see, sanctioned or otherwise.
Phase 02: Analyse. Responses aggregate into a maturity score across the five pillars, with variance analysis highlighting where leadership layers see the organisation differently. Strengths and exposures both show up. So do the blind spots.
Phase 03: Focus. You get a prioritised blueprint, not a generic report. Sequenced around impact, effort, and where your organisation is actually ready to move. Board-ready, decision-ready.
Ongoing measurement
AI maturity moves. So does the technology. AI Compass is designed for longitudinal measurement, so you can validate whether interventions are working, track uplift round over round, and make sure blind spots don't re-emerge.
Start with a free Readiness Check
The five-minute Readiness Check at aicompass.io/assess gives an immediate snapshot before committing to the full diagnostic. No sales call required.
From diagnostic to delivered change
Strategy and scope
Once the Compass is in, we work with your executive team to separate the AI interesting from the AI material. We identify the three to five workflows where AI will move the needle in the next twelve months, and we sequence the rest honestly.
Capability and change
We build internal capability so your people can run this after we've gone. AI literacy for the leadership team, hands-on training for the teams closest to the workflows, and change design that treats AI as a new colleague rather than a new button.
Adoption and measurement
We design the adoption layer using WalkMe where it fits, alongside measurement that tells you whether the workflow has actually changed, not just whether the tool is being clicked. We call this the difference between usage and use.
Responsible AI and governance
We put the guardrails in place without slowing the work down. Governance, data, privacy, and bias mitigation, designed so your legal, risk, and technology teams are pulling in the same direction.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI Compass?
AI Compass is Five's proprietary AI maturity diagnostic and strategic advisory platform. It measures AI readiness across five interconnected pillars, compares variance between leadership layers, and delivers a board-ready, prioritised roadmap. It's available at aicompass.io.
How is AI Compass different from other AI readiness assessments?
Three things. First, it's grounded in Five's five-pillar model, so AI readiness is measured in the same frame as the rest of your transformation work. Second, it surfaces variance between what the C-suite sees and what the front line experiences, which is where most AI investment actually stalls. Third, it leads directly into Five's AI adoption services, so the diagnostic becomes delivered change.
Is the Readiness Check really free?
Yes. The Readiness Check at aicompass.io/assess takes about five minutes and gives you an immediate snapshot. The full AI Compass diagnostic is a paid engagement that goes much deeper, with role-tailored surveys, variance analysis, and a prioritised roadmap.
What happens after the diagnostic?
You have options. Some organisations take the roadmap and deliver internally. Others engage Five to deliver against it, either in full or in the one or two pillars where the gap is biggest. We're set up for both.
What size organisation is AI Compass for?
NZ and Australian organisations of two-hundred-plus people where AI is already on the executive agenda. We work across financial services, retail, insurance, government, energy, fintech, and professional services.
Who leads the engagement?
A senior Fiver, supported by our AI Strategy Advisor and AI Change Consultant. The people you meet in the pitch are the people doing the work. No rotating juniors.
Do you work with a specific AI platform?
We're platform-agnostic on the AI layer itself. We work across Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT Enterprise, Gemini, and the major vertical players. We're opinionated on the adoption layer, where our WalkMe partnership lets us measure and improve usage in the tools your people actually touch.
Start with your AI readiness
Take the free five-minute AI Compass Readiness Check, or book a conversation about the full diagnostic and what it would take to turn your AI investment into embedded change.
Get in Touch →Our Team
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Bottom line is this. If you can see something, and other people can’t (or won’t) see it, then it’s always the right thing to call it out. Politely. With care. With love. With respect. The intention of giving feedback must always be that you care about the other person; That you care about better outcomes for you, them, the organisation, and everyone around them.
Nick Mackeson-SmithEmployers - get ready for your future employees
Education today is changing. It’s different to what many of us grew up with, and may feel unfamiliar or “loose” to those of us who had a more formal and structured education. These days, knowledge can be accessed instantly and doesn’t necessarily need to be committed to memory for ever. The skills our children will need to be successful in this world are demonstrably different to the ones we developed at school. The rate of change has increased significantly, and our approach to education has had to make some pretty big leaps to stay relevant.
Nick Mackeson-SmithUnbelievable new joiner experiences
In my whole career of joining and saying goodbye and then joining organisations again, I’ve only experienced an unbelievable new joiner experience once. I also met my wife in the process, so it obviously sticks in my memory! The great thing is, this sort of experience isn’t actually that hard to replicate. The bad thing is, organisations and hiring managers often get in the way of making it a reality for their new people.It’s actually a lot easier than people think.
Nick Mackeson-SmithOne on one conversations that spark joy
One on ones don’t need to be a chore. I often hear from leaders that they struggle to get themselves motivated to have the repetitive weekly or monthly 1:1 conversation with their teams… and worse still, it feels like they are compelled to have them. I’ve been asked by leaders for templates for great 1:1s… and been shown templates for conversation flows that provide a rigid structure and boundaries for the conversation.
Nick Mackeson-SmithFuture skills for New Zealand
Nick took time out at the ATEED Future Ready Summit 2019 to share his thoughts on what skills every Aucklander (and beyond) should be looking to develop now to prepare themselves for the future.
Nick Mackeson-SmithA new kind of leadership
For years, I've been pre-occupied with a very simple question: what makes a great leader?I've observed many leaders, but great ones have been harder to find, and they seem to be becoming more scarce in the workplace. What's caused this leadership drain?
Nick Mackeson-SmithTake empowerment back
The critique of empowerment has become deafening, and it’s frustrating.
Nick Mackeson-SmithLeadership development for our time
Great leaders are everything, and can be the difference between a performing organisation, and a high performance organisation. They can inspire people to be at their best, even when the outlook is challenging. They can create magical relationships which are based on deep trust and respect, and unlock significant amounts of discretionary effort in the workforce. They can be a force for positive cultural change, and can turn around long-standing issues in double-quick time. In short, they are awesome, and every organisation should do whatever they can to attract/develop/retain them. Trouble is, lots of organisations fall short in developing their leaders. There is another way…..
Nick Mackeson-SmithGetting agile right
There are so many aspects to agile, and it’s really important to understand what they are all about and why each of them are necessary. Some are structural, or procedural - things like having a very disciplined cadence of times when teams come together, or having really well defined set of objectives and expected results within a defined period of time. The structure allows teams to build upon their work in a repeatable and incremental way, and means that massive programmes of work can be broken down into much smaller and more manageable chunks.
Business strategy: Hunker down or pivot?
Businesses everywhere are facing new headwinds and constraints - conflict in Ukraine and geopolitics elsewhere are having enormous impacts on financial markets, consumer confidence, and supply chains.
In times like this, it's easy to be fearful and hunker down to protect yourself from the coming storm... but is that the best thing you could do? What if there was a smarter move to make - one that would see you ride the wave instead of duck and cover?
Nick Mackeson-SmithThe critical connection between organisational culture and strategic success.
The success of an organisation is heavily reliant on the alignment between its culture and strategy. While strategy defines an organisation's long-term direction, culture determines how things get done within the organisation. A misalignment between culture and strategy can have severe consequences, both financially and reputationally. Despite this link, many organisations fail to develop a deep understanding of what their culture is, could be, or needs to be in order to drive their strategic ambitions. It’s time to dig deeper.
Nick Mackeson-SmithReimagining outplacement.
Outplacement support has been around for as long as I can remember. Organisations soften the blow of a redundancy or restructure by offering the departing employee some help in finding the next role; CV writing, LinkedIn profile updating, reviewing key achievements. The list goes on. Now, it’s different. Consider the organisations who are cutting hundreds - or thousands - of jobs. A little bit of CV prep and interview practice isn’t going to cut it for those people leaving… there simply aren’t thousands of jobs available for people to move on to. Something else is needed.
Nick Mackeson-SmithDoing it all: Addressing 2023’s C-suite wishlist with WalkMe
As we move into 2023, the C-suite's wishlist is becoming increasingly clear. Companies want to do it all - improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and drive innovation. And it's no secret that the key to achieving these goals is digital transformation.
Digital transformation is about more than just technology - it's about changing the way a business operates and interacts with customers. And the cornerstone of a successful digital transformation is a robust digital adoption platform.
A digital adoption platform, such as WalkMe, can help businesses streamline processes, provide users with instant support, and eliminate the need for extensive training. This leads to increased productivity, improved user experience, and enhanced customer satisfaction - all of which are essential in today's fast-paced, digital world.
But implementing a digital adoption platform is not a one-size-fits-all solution. That's why it's important to choose the right partner to help with the implementation. FiveNZ has the experience and knowledge to ensure a successful implementation, allowing companies to achieve their digital transformation goals and stay ahead of the curve.
Nick Mackeson-SmithThe dangers of a communications vacuum in times of change.
Don't let a lack of communication lead to disaster during times of organisational change. Learn about the dangers of a communications vacuum and how to prevent it in our latest blog post. Our team at Five NZ provides practical tips and insights to help you navigate the challenges of change management and keep your employees engaged and informed. Read more now on the Five NZ Blog
Nick Mackeson-SmithDigital transformation. The time is now.
Digital transformation is becoming increasingly critical for companies in New Zealand to remain competitive in their respective industries. As competition grows and customer expectations evolve, organisations must keep up with the latest technological advancements to ensure that they can deliver a consistent digital experience. Digital transformation initiatives can be complex and challenging, with potential obstacles such as employee resistance, lack of expertise, and cost overruns - that's where a comprehensive and effective digital adoption platform like WalkMe can help. Here, we explore the importance of digital transformation for organisations, the benefits of a digital adoption platform like WalkMe, and the role that Five NZ, New Zealand's first and only certified delivery partner for WalkMe, can support organisations in achieving their digital transformation goals.
