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Claude Champions programme

People copy people, not memos. A rollout email tells everyone Claude is available; a colleague doing the same job, showing how they used it this morning, changes what the team does next. A champions programme puts that person in every team, on purpose.

This template is for the person who sets the programme up. The Claude skill at the end is for the champions, to use every week.

Claude Champions is the name we use for the internal champion network in the programmes we run. It isn’t an Anthropic programme. For Anthropic’s own rollout guidance, see the Claude Academy.

What a Claude Champion does, and doesn’t

How many you need, and who to pick

How many: 5 to 10% of the people in scope, and at least one in every team with Claude. One champion can support 10 to 20 colleagues.

Who: ask each team lead one question: who does your team already go to when they’re stuck? That person, not the keenest AI enthusiast, is your champion.

• Does the same work as the people they’ll help
• Trusted by their team; people already ask them things
• Curious, and willing to try things in front of others
• Their manager supports the time
• Technical skill: not required

The time commitment, agreed with their manager

Write it down and have the manager sign it off. Without that, the role disappears the first time the team has a deadline.

The 90-day plan for the network

It fits alongside the build in our Claude Enterprise first 90 days checklist.

The champion’s week

About two hours, in three parts:

1. One short session or demo (15 to 45 minutes). Weekly in the first month, then fortnightly. Built on something the team is doing this week, not a feature tour. The skill plans it from what the team is working on.
2. Office hours (30 minutes). A standing slot where anyone brings a real task. Weekly for the first 30 to 60 days after a release, then fortnightly.
3. Follow-ups and the weekly note (30 minutes). Check back with anyone they helped, and send five lines to the programme lead.

The weekly note: what champions report

Five lines, every week, to the programme lead. The skill writes it from the champion’s own notes.

Good ideas go into the use case backlog and get scored with ICE (Impact × Confidence × Ease, out of 1,000). Our use case prioritisation framework sets out the scoring.

Measuring whether it’s working

Report use at team level, never individual. Champions who look like they’re monitoring colleagues lose the trust that makes the role work.

Recognition that keeps the role alive

• Champions named in programme communications and the sponsor’s updates
• Early access to what’s coming next, and a say in how it’s rolled out
• Their ideas credited to them when they make it into the backlog
• The role written into their objectives, so it counts at review time
• A visible thank-you from the executive sponsor at day 90

Where it goes wrong

• Picking the enthusiasts, not the trusted. The keenest AI user is not necessarily the person their team listens to.
• No time agreed. The role becomes goodwill, and goodwill runs out.
• Trained after launch. Champions learning alongside everyone else can’t help anyone.
• Weekly notes nobody reads. Act on one thing from the notes every week, and say so.
• Turning champions into a helpdesk. Access and technical faults go to IT; champions handle “how do I do my work with this”.

A Claude skill for the champions themselves

Give every champion the free claude-champion skill on day one (the download is at the top of this page). It works with the champion, in Claude, on the six parts of the role:

If you run Claude with the Kowalah Plugin, champions can raise the ideas they find straight into your operating model’s backlog.