Warmly CEO Max Greenwald has planted his AI stake in the ground: “At Warmly, you're underperforming if you're not 30% more efficient by the end of this year using AI.”
It’s a bold take, but not a solitary one. Shopify’s leaked AI manifesto not only made AI use a mandatory expectation of every employee – it now requires them to prove why AI isn’t good enough when they request more headcount. Fiverr’s founder & CEO sent an email to his team saying AI was coming for all their jobs, with next steps to stay relevant and valuable at the company.
At Warmly, by the end of 2025 every employee needs to reach what Max has called “AI efficiency.” The result? Whatever an employee’s output was last year, he expects them to increase it by 30%.
Here’s how he’s defining AI efficiency, how he’s promoting it, and what’s working so far.
The goal: 100% adoption, 30% productivity growth
What Max is calling AI efficiency, we would call AI expert level proficiency here at Section. Essentially, you’ve achieved the goal if you’ve reached:
- Daily use of AI that is meaningful – i.e., working with AI on strategic outputs that drive business outcomes
- A measurable improvement in personal productivity through working with AI
Max’s expectation is that once 100% of Warmly employees have achieved this expert level of AI proficiency, their output should increase by 30%.
“I should be able to task you with 30% more at the end of this year, and you should be able to accomplish that because of your use of AI," Max said.
He gives the example of his engineering team. Currently, they spend around 32 hours a week coding and 8 hours on meetings and bug fixes. AI can’t increase the number of hours they have, but he expects it to make their existing hours more impactful.
“I'm now expecting by the end of the year that they can produce five days worth of code with four days worth of effort. And if they don't hit that, then from a performance review perspective, there'll be no longer meeting expectations."
Engineering is a go-to study, because AI tools are already advanced at coding – Max acknowledges that some roles are going to have a tougher time meeting this new metric.
He brings up sales, for instance. "We record all of our meetings using AI note takers. And so their follow ups and task management are 30% more effective, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into 30% more sales. Though you could argue they should be able to prospect more and get more meetings.”
But even though some roles at Warmly will have more indirect ways of achieving AI ROI, they’re still expected to find them.
The plan to get there
Max leans heavily on the carrot, but he does have a stick. “The carrot is: your job gets easier. The stick is: my expectations are 30% higher.”
Here’s how he’s approaching both.
The carrot
Company-provided tools – and budget for more. Everyone has ChatGPT Pro, Slack AI and Notion AI for general productivity, and different functions have role-specific tools (e.g. Figma AI for the designers). But each department also has a $25,000 annual budget for additional AI tools, and the ability to request more.
Internal show and tell. Every two weeks, one person in the company gives a presentation on how they’re using AI – including the CEO. It’s a pat on the back for the person who presents and inspiration (or a prod) for those who attended.
Positioning AI upskilling as a company perk. As Max said, “Calling yourself an AI native employee allows you to be more employable elsewhere. And we’re covering that training for you.”
A running company dialogue on AI. Team members share their own AI use cases, frustrations, and wins, and everyone expects that AI is talked about constantly and openly.
The stick
Plain and simple, if you don’t pass the 30% test, you are not meeting expectations.
At the end of the year, employees will be asked to speak to their AI efficiency in performance evaluations – and Max is making that known. “It's an urgency mechanism for all managers to insist that folks are really doing it.”
How it’s going so far
Max is planning to do monthly check-ins with each department to see how they’re tracking towards the “AI efficiency” goal – by comparing this year’s performance against 130% of last year’s targets.
Here’s where he said his teams are at now:
🟢 Marketing: Already at the 30% improvement mark based on content production and ideation processes.
🟡 Engineering: On track with a 10-15% improvement achieved based on developer days and coding hours.
🟠 Customer Success & Support: Early stage gains, with a 10% improvement as they’re still working to integrate AI into service workflows.
🔴 Business Ops, Product, and Data: Lagging with a roughly 5% improvement. They’re experimenting with workflows but may need more technical tools.
As you might expect, the language-intensive teams are starting to clearly excel under the new mandate. For the other departments, Max said he’s looking to try a few things to accelerate their progress:
- More frequent and regular shoutouts of good use cases
- Bringing in expert AI consultants to talk to the team about where they’re seeing wins
- A focus on more department-level training vs. just company-wide training
How to copy Warmly’s bold mandate
If you’re hoping to do what Max is doing with your own team, here’s what he recommends:
- Wake up your leadership team: Make them understand that “someday” is now – and that AI is already here. There isn’t time to waste and you need their buy-in to get team-wide buy-in.
- Set aside a real budget for this: Get board approval to fund AI tools and experimentation – your growth is coming from your investment. So if you want high growth, plan to invest high too.
- Really push the carrot: This doesn’t just have to be a mandate. You’re elevating their status to AI-native employee – the next most desirable and cool thing to be.
