How Shopify’s CEO Delivered the AI Mandate to His Workers
Tobias Lütke reveals his frustration at the pace of using artificial intelligence
If you want your employees to use artificial intelligence, then you might think twice before imitating Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke’s recent memo to the e-commerce company’s workers.
The nearly 1,300-word memo, which he posted to social media on April 7, 2025, was widely covered by the news media because of its bottom-line message: “Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation at Shopify.”
Yet little attention has been paid to how he delivered that message to the roughly 8,100 employees of the Ottawa, Ontario-based company he co-founded. Lütke’s memo provides lessons to CEOs on how to motivate employees about any big policy change, not just the adoption of AI.
Overcoming employees’ skepticism about the new technology is a problem for many chief executives. Yet CEOs looking for an example to follow will mostly be disappointed by Lütke’s memo. He misses the mark on two of three key points he should have hit.
The Shopify media relations team did not respond to emails requesting comment.
His workers likely respect his coding expertise and appreciate his remarkable career. A billionaire in his mid-40s, he was raised in Koblenz, Germany. A poor student with an avid interest in computers, he immigrated to Canada in 2002.
In 2006, Lütke and two friends turned a website selling snowboarding gear into a platform helping small firms transact business online. In 2024, Shopify revenue jumped 26% to $8.88 billion, up from nearly $7.10 billion in 2023.
Communication teams should keep these three points in mind when advising their chief executives on writing staff-wide memos about using AI.
1. Show passion. Employees want to feel their CEO’s genuine enthusiasm about the business. Some chief executives are more comfortable talking about computer code and calculations. Lütke doesn’t have that problem.
“We are entering a time where more merchants and entrepreneurs could be created than any other in history,” he begins his memo.
Near the end, he writes, “I couldn’t think of a better place to be part of this truly unprecedented change than being here.”
2. Express empathy. More than half of workers say they’re worried about how AI will be used in the workplace, according to a Pew Research Center report released in February. A third say AI will lead to fewer job opportunities for them.
Tech executives and workers are caught in between, with 95% saying that AI skills are the “best way” to ensure job security, but nearly as many say losing their jobs to AI is at least somewhat likely, according to a survey by tech training firm Pluralsight released this month.
Lütke is convinced that AI is crucial to Shopify’s success, but he doesn’t acknowledge employees’ concerns.
Employees want leaders to discuss the use of artificial intelligence, David De Cremer, a management professor at Northeastern University, wrote in the Harvard Business Review last month.
“Trust directly affects AI’s successful adoption, influencing employee productivity, engagement, and willingness to embrace AI-driven changes and supervision,” he wrote. “Evidence suggests that trust is in short supply.”
3. Watch the tone. Lütke said he posted the internal memo online because “it was in the process of being leaked and (presumably) shown in bad faith.”
The memo simmers with that frustration, lecturing employees on the importance of AI, a point he says he’s already made many times.
By directly addressing employees who are using AI, he reveals his frustration with those who are the primary audience of the memo: “Maybe you are already there [using AI] and find this memo puzzling,” he writes.
In other words, those who aren’t puzzled know who you are?
He blames employees who didn’t take an earlier hint, writing: “The call to tinker with it [AI] was the right one, but it was too much of a suggestion. This is what I want to change here today.”
In other words, I tried to do this the easy way?
He also writes: “Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow.”
In other words, you’re not really welcome to try?
We once suggested a rule for chief executives: Don’t go to bed angry or start a town hall that way. We would now add, “Or write a memo.”
Lütke’s memo could have used a rewrite. In a stream-of-consciousness style, he talks more about himself than the team and peppers his sentences with jargon and cliches. He doesn’t tell workers what the memo means to them until he’s half-way through.
He says he uses AI “all the time.” We’d ask if AI wrote the memo, but artificial intelligence apps are probably better writers.
Tom Corfman thinks motivating employees to use artificial intelligence programs is too important to delegate to AI. He’s a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, where he directs the Build Better Writers program.
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