If you're a leader who's rolled out an AI tool like co pilot or chat GPT and wonder Light hasn't led to the big productivity gains you were promised, or worse, it feels like you've created more mess. You are not alone because on paper, this stuff should be easy. Give people access, maybe run a short demo and let them figure it out. But in reality that approach often leads to confusion, resistance, and a lot of wasted time. And it's not because your people are unwilling or slow to adapt.
It's because AI adoption isn't really a tech problem, it's a people one. So in this episode, Neo and I unpack the single most important question every leader should be asking about AI and what to do once you've asked it. We're going to talk through why giving people licenses without support backfires, how poor AI use can actually reduce productivity, and three things leaders need to get right from day one.
By the end, you're going to have a much clearer sense of how to bring AI into your organization without losing trust, time, or momentum. Welcome to how IAI with Me, Doctor Amantha Imba and Neo Applan, head of Inventium, AI. Each episode we share one practical way to use AI better at work and in life. No fluff, no tech jargon,
just things you can use straight away. So, Neo at Inventium AI, we work with so many different teams and we've probably worked with hundreds and hundreds of different leaders at this point in time, and they have got a lot of questions for us. But today we want to talk about the one question that we think every leader should be asking about AI. So tell me, Neo, what is this one question that every single leader should ask about AI.
It's about how can I help my people be ready for AI? Because it's a people problem, not a technology problem. We found this every single step along the way, where simply giving someone here's an AI, go for it. You've got CHPT, you've got clawed, you've got Gemini go is actually a recipe for disaster. They've shown this in so
many studies of implementations globally. There've been cases where people have effectively demigrated, which is the staff have risen up and said, take this damn thing off my computer now. And so that's an expensive problem to have. It's an expensive mistake to have, and not just that you've got a whole bunch of staff members who are then disenfranchised, don't feel like they we listen to and things like that. So this is very much a people dimension. So how do we get our people ready for AI?
I am personally surprised at how many organizations we encounter that have given people a paid license for whatever their AI tool of choice is and they haven't done anything in terms of building capability. They think, oh, it's just like Google. You just you know, speak to it in your caveman, you know, best restaurants, Melbourne speak, and it's just intuitive how to get the best out of it.
But for you and I I think, because we're deep in this space and we have been using it every day, multiple times a day, for gosh like about three years now, to get the best out of it, it's not actually intuitive. So what are some of the things that leaders can practically do to set their teams up for success assuming they have just implemented or rolled out a paid version paid licence since the it's a their AI tool of choice, or they're thinking about doing that in the coming months.
First off, telling people why why you will think that AI is a good thing. Now, we found the most successful organizations give the why, not that we're going to replace people and get bitter people in their jobs. That's going to make people scared. The why often we've found from organizations is we've got people who are already overloaded. They're already feeling like they've got to work seventy out
of hours a week. How do we get people so they can reliably do their forty hours a week to be able to get more done and also to do more important things. So you're doing a ministrivia, I'm doing everyone's doing a minister via. Why don't we get AI to do some of that in misterrivia so we can
focus on the important stuff. The leaders that I've spoken to, most of them recognize that this is the thing that really is going to drive their business forward, rather than get AI to replace people, because particularly with these kinds of AI, this is very much a knowledge worker AI. It's plucked into your applications, your emails and things like
that to help you to do your day. Because, of course, the other AI, which is like full on automation and things like that, so that's a completely different type of AI and also different kind of human question. But getting
copilot on your desktop very much a human problem. So saying the why and really making sure that people understand that, I mean understand viscerally understand, like we actually care about our staff, we care about your job, and you're doing a lot of you know, standard stuff that could be done better by AI. Let's get you doing the smarter things. So yeah, when that's actually framed as a people problem, then people do resonate and they go, yes, this is good.
I am actually on board with this. The other thing is, don't just give the tools and say that's good enough. We've had quite a few teams who when it's got a wonderful interface, this chatbot gonna interface where there's a prompt spot and a go button and a plus buttoned upload a couple of files, like, it's wonderful and simple, but it doesn't tell you how it's actually going to
work and how you should work with it. I'm sure you've heard of people who have a microwave, but all they do in the microwave is they use it for defrosting, or people with expensive thermo mixers who only make smoothies out of it, and things like that. Ais are just the same. There are quite a few people out there who know two or three things to do an AI and that continue doing those two or three things. But it's onthing touching the surface of what it can achieve.
I find that the most common thing I hear from leaders that I meet with is you know, people are using it for their emails and stuff, and I just think,
oh gosh, like that's that's not good. And then I also find that it can also actually reduce productivity when people are doing that, because inevitably they're just putting in, oh, communicate this these three dot points, and then they'll get a really lengthy and wordy email that is clearly written by AI, and then the recipe recipient or the recipients then have to waste their time reading a potentially quite a long email just to get the three bullet points
that were originally put in. So, I mean, it's just another example of how if people are not trained in AI, you're actually going to pretty much kill off any productivity benefit that you think AI is going to give you.
And the other problem with AI being overused, particularly with productivity, is if I just get my AI to write three dot points and it writes a big document or a big email, you'll then use AI to summarize it, and so then it's going to be organizational Chinese whispers where no one's really going to understand what everyone's talking about, and so you will not get productivity with that. So then the next part is showing people how they can
actually use AI in a productive way. So how it can help you to ID eight, how to be more creative, how you can get it to review your work and make your work better, How you can help it with your problem solving, or as we've talked about before, organize and plan your day and break down your tasks and things like that. So using there's a buddy and an expert rather than just your email running slave is so much more productive organizationally. But people need to be shown this.
What else deleters need to do to get their teams ready for AI?
One is technology, So just simply buying take copile it as an example, which a lot of companies do. Buying copelet throwing it in into saying you go and now maybe some training, which is great. Absolutely yes, do the training, but technology wise is not alone, particularly if you're going to plug it into your systems, your email and your data. So if you are going to allow your AI to be able to search documents, you get massive productivity benefits.
So I can then say, hey, help me with these three documents, will help me find that thing or tell me about everything we've done with client X. So power is amazing there. However, you don't lock some things away. I could say how much is Amantha being paid? Or where was the last HR problem last month? And things Things you don't want to go public can go public
in all least within your organization. So when you get to place these organizational tools in, make sure that your data people have had a look through it and we're protecting things like staff data, company data, customer data, privacy and all those kind of things in the way that we need to as for our company and policies.
So just a summarize for leaders, you really need to be thinking about what do I need to do to help my team be AI ready. We've talked about three main things. Firstly, the why, make sure you and your people are really clear on the why you are doing this. Secondly, make sure you are building capability AI and getting the best out of to augment your thinking and save hours
as well. On the productivity front, it's not necessarily intuitive and in fact looks you can do some things, but often when people just use it out of the box, it's actually creating more work for other people due to AI slop as opposed to saving time and hours and improving your thinking. And then finally, make sure with whatever you're connecting it into that you obviously are thinking these things through and not releasing people's salary details for example.
And as a bonus point here, I'd say train your changed leads, which might be your team leads, it might be dedicated to change leads to be able to help people to fit AI into their workday. So I'm writing a report every week, get the change lead to help me to figure out how I can get AI to help me to make that report writing task a lot faster, a lot more simple. So that's the showing people how
to use every function on the firma mixed kind of problem. Now, the thing is that often me is just a regular staff member. I'm not tapped into all those things. So as far as what the capabilities are, the best practice, how to plug it into these tools and things like that. So having the changed leads who have first off been through training themselves and additional training, like we offer proper change lead at training, but make sure that they know
more than just which button to press. It's more about how this tool can help people in their workflow. That's where the real benefits come in. Because simply saying you can use it to help you write documents is great. Showing them how that document can be written or changed, or analyzed or or brought into a whole bunch of
things is the valuable part. So those change leads and being able to work with people so so important to be able to get productive in the organization, and also in a way that people feel supported.
If you are listening to this and thinking, oh my goodness, I've not done any of this yet, I am a leader. Give me and I drop us a note. We are helping companies with these kinds of challenges every single day. There's an email address in the show notes and we will see you next Monday. If you found this useful, please help us spread the AI love and share it with someone who you think would benefit from knowing what you now know. And if you're ready to really start
mastering AI, check out Inventium dot ai. We help individuals, teams, and organizations turn Jenai into a real work superpower, saving ten plus hours a week and staying future ready without the jargon or overwhelmed. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time on how IAI. How IAI was hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan. A big thank you to Martin Imba who does our sound editing, and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to John Kilby who composed the theme music.