Supporting Your Team Through AI Change
The response to my last article on AI upskilling really struck me. I heard from colleagues, clients, and leaders across the industry who are feeling the same pressure: AI is moving fast, and many people feel they’re expected to move even faster.
From a technologist’s perspective, this isn’t surprising. Where things begin to shift is when leaders treat AI transformation not as a race to push training, but as a design challenge, one that calls for clarity, intentionality, and practicality. When we design well, the experience becomes more sustainable for the people we rely on to make AI successful in the first place.
These suggestions are grounded in what I’ve seen work inside real organisations:
1. Move Beyond Generic AI Training
Relevance is everything. A role-based AI literacy framework aligns much more naturally with how teams actually work. Three layers that make sense in real organisations:
🔹 Foundational Literacy (for everyone)
A shared understanding of what AI is, what it isn’t, and how to use it responsibly.
🔹 Functional Skills (per domain)
Because engineering, product, finance, operations, marketing, and HR each have entirely different AI touchpoints.
🔹 Advanced Capability (targeted roles)
For those shaping AI strategy or implementation: AI product owners, automation specialists, data teams, innovation leads.
This mirrors how we already think in technology: the right information, to right user, at the right moment. It reduces noise and gives people something they can actually apply.
2. Curate Resources
In product work, curation is fundamental. We don’t throw every feature at users, we prioritise what matters. Leaders can take a similar approach with AI learning by making it easier for teams to navigate:
A small set of credible learning resources
Clear guidance on which AI tools are approved and why
Documented examples of how AI fits into existing workflows
Simple prompt libraries or templates
A shared repository of internal use cases that grows organically
This doesn’t require you as a leader to create everything from scratch. It’s more about structuring information so that teams don’t waste time trying to figure out where to begin. It also instills a culture of sharing so that this curated list of resources starts to build up slowly over time. In technology terms: reduce friction so adoption can actually happen.
3. Use AI to Free Up Capacity
One observation from working in AI-enabled product environments is this:
learning is not the first bottleneck — capacity is.
The first step should be using AI to remove repetitive work so that teams can have the capacity to train and absorb what they are learning and not just finish that course because they have to. Here are some things that can be automated;
Examples include:
Automated meeting notes
Email and document summarisation
Drafting reports or presentations
Streamlining admin-heavy workflows
Quick information retrieval or research
Scheduling support
These small wins do two important things:
They reduce load, creating time and mental space for actual learning.
They show AI’s value through real use cases, building genuine interest rather than forced compliance.
4. Treat AI Upskilling as a Change Journey
AI introduces emotional responses that are easy to underestimate: fear of redundancy, uncertainty, curiosity, excitement, anxiety. These reactions aren’t HR issues; they’re normal responses to complex change.
Leaders can help by:
Making room for questions
Being honest about what may evolve and what won’t
Sharing their own learning curve (“I’m figuring this out too”)
Celebrating meaningful small steps
Adoption happens when people feel they can explore and experiment without judgment.
Final Thought
When learning is human-centered, curated, role-relevant, and supported by real capacity and culture, AI becomes a catalyst for growth and innovation. When it is grounded in real workflows, AI becomes something teams feel they can work with, not against.
The organisations that will thrive aren’t the ones that push AI hardest. They’re the ones that create the conditions for people to grow with confidence, curiosity, and wellbeing at the centre of the journey.