Give the team back the week

Cost savings are the wrong pitch to a government team. They already have a budget. What they do not have is time — the analyst working until 2am, the head of comms answering the same three questions from three departments, the director rewriting the same memo for the fourth stakeholder.

Measure the week you gave back. Hours reclaimed, per person, per week, doing work only humans should do. Publish the number internally. Celebrate it the way sales teams celebrate quota.

Two side effects. First, teams stop hiding AI usage — the metric rewards them for it. Second, the conversation shifts from 'will AI replace us' to 'what would I do with the extra six hours,' which is a conversation adults can have without theatre.