Your Ultimate 5-Step Playbook To Enable AI Confidence

Author

Ross Stevenson
June 17th, 2025

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 TODAY’S THOUGHTS ☠️

Hey there 👋,

I’ve been travelling a lot this week, so an early Saturday morning finds me writing this intro with a warm cup of white tea.

Despite writing these words at the weekend, I’ve already spent hours during the week writing scribbles, drawing hieroglyphic images only I understand and voice notes that would make me sound like a psycho.

Basically, it takes a lot of work to shape these newsletters.

But you don’t want to hear that, do you? Unless you do, and you should let me know, and maybe one day, I’ll share the method that goes behind all this madness.

Anyway, the theme of ‘behind the scenes’ work relates to today’s conversation.

I get a bunch of messages asking for advice on deploying and making new tech successful. A lot of this focuses on AI nowadays, obvs.

For anything to be successful, you need to create an environment to enable it. I still rarely see people do this.

Today, we’re unpacking a 5-step playbook to enable AI confidence in your L&D team and throughout your business. This will help you be the strategic partner your business needs in the age of AI.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

P.S. Your app might clip this edition due to size, if so, read the full edition in all its glory in your browser.

 IN THIS DROP 📔

  • What it takes to make AI work for you and L&D

  • How to become a strategic performance partner, not a farmer

  • When learning science meets AI

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 THE BIG THOUGHT 👀

Your Ultimate 5-Step Playbook To Enable AI Confidence in L&D and Beyond

Tell Game Show GIF by ABC Network

Maybe…

AI tools are here to stay.

Probably one of the most obvious sentences I’ve written this week.

So, how are you investing in your AI know-how and skills to best serve the teams you support?

That’s not a trick question, btw.

They now form a cornerstone of how we work and will do forever more. This means you and your L&D strategy need to serve this too.

Let me make one thing clear – your L&D strategy should not centre on AI alone.

It’s a spoke in the wheel of your strategy, not the whole damn thing.

Here’s a collection of resources and advice that I could probably charge a lotta money for all in one place for zero cost.

I bet you’re glad you opened this one now!

Start here: Build your team’s AI skills and understanding

You can’t help others without helping yourself.

So, if you don’t know where to start, check out my AI in L&D readiness framework.

For bonus points, take a peek at the 4 levels of transformation with AI for L&D to get clear on what’s possible.

If you want to accelerate in this space beyond 90% of L&D teams, make sure to check out my AI for L&D Crash Course.

When you’ve done all of this, you’ll be in the best place to guide your teams.

Now, it’s time to unpack the below.

Think of this as your ultimate 5-step playbook to:

  • Future-proof your learning solutions and skills

  • Implement AI meaningfully for the long term in L&D

  • Craft real value, not contribute to the noise

The gold

1/ Get clear on the fundamentals of AI

You shouldn’t use any tech without a basic knowledge of how it works.

Access to this information for generative AI is everywhere. A little education goes a long way. The more you know, the more you can maximise it in your work.

This starts with you.

You can’t be an effective strategic partner if you don’t have foundational know-how in the area. I’m not asking you to become an AI engineer here!

Just the basics, friend.

Use these resources to accelerate your learning:

They’re all zero-cost tools.

I’m looking out for your budget here.

Plus, get more from my back catalogue:

2/ Build the right AI behaviours

The single most overlooked question in the AI for L&D conversation.

It’s not how we use AI tools.

👉 It’s why should we?

It’s the classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Everyone gets excited about tools but never asks why they need them.

The answer is not “because everyone else does”.

Having clear intentions and use cases is imperative. We have to help each other think beyond tools. That’s why it’s essential to know why, when and how to work with AI tools.

Building an intelligent framework to collaborate with AI is far better than learning how to use tools alone.

You could say this is a meta-skill.

❝

AI is a tool, and like any tool, it needs human input.

I believe we need to deploy two unique human skills when working with AI.

These both happen to be two of the 5 skills identified in my ongoing skills series for the Future of Work.

Let’s walk through a workflow of these in action with an AI-delegated task:

🫵 The Feedback Workshop

Let’s imagine you want AI to help you craft a feedback workshop with:

  • Experience outline

  • Title for the workshop because ‘Feedback workshop’ sucks

  • An email draft to promote the course to employees

Before you feed a prompt to your AI tool of choice, you should think critically about what you want to achieve with this task.

Consider:

  • What do you want AI to focus on?

  • How do you want to design the experience?

  • What will best support your audience?

You continue doing this with each response that your AI tool provides.

Your judgement and decision-making skills weave through this process, too.

Use your humanness (I know it’s not a real word) to evaluate every response and help AI understand if it’s hitting all the right notes for you.

If it helps, consider its responses as an ugly first draft.

You’ll work on this draft as a human task to provide the context and application it needs for your experience.

This is the difference between delegating everything to AI and working with AI.

3/ Lead with intelligent AI use cases

Let’s be real, a lot of use cases with generative AI pushed online are gimmicks.

AI-generated images of yourself and funny videos are no use in L&D.

That’s why you should always be clear on what problems you’re trying to solve, because AI is not the right tool for every job.

Don’t fall for the tool before use case trap.

Finding the problems you need to solve shouldn’t be too hard in our line of work.

Here’s a quick exercise to uncover where AI collaboration could help:

  1. Open a doc or a notebook

  2. Write down the max 10 tasks you do weekly

  3. Review each and ask, “From what I know about current generative AI tools, can they help with this task?”

  4. If so, investigate how and learn to use it in your work.

You can encourage this at an individual and group level.

🧠 The AI Thought Partner

One of, if not, my favourite use cases so far.

Everyone focuses on content creation, where the real power is in thought partnering.

This is only a slice of the opportunity it can bring to your work.

I mostly work with AI as a thought partner. Kind of like a team member or intern to bounce ideas around with.

Here’s a few examples:

😮 Boring, basic, but hugely effective AI use cases for most humans

We tend to go big when it’s the small tasks that add up.

The biggest wins from AI will come from the daily tasks we either dread or just take too much time to do.

4/ Choose AI tools wisely

Social media tells us thousands of new AI tools are released daily.

The truth is, 95% of these have nothing to do with AI.

They’re sub-par products riding the hype wave. It’s your job to find what’s real and works for you.

Here’s my recommendation:

  1. Pick one popular app: ChatGPT, Claude, MS Copilot, Sana (or the LLM your company uses)

  2. Experiment with this one tool for 6 weeks

  3. Pick one other tool that’s specific to your industry. For example, research nerds might choose NotebookLM

  4. Experiment with both for 6 – 8 weeks. If they don’t fit, try others.

  5. Keep it minimal. Always have 1 general tool + one industry-specific

This is a zero-cost method of experimentation.

Which AI model is right for you?

With so many AI models appearing almost daily, it can be confusing to know which model is best for your tasks.

Should you use GPT-style generative models, reasoning models, or deep research tools?

In this video, I break down a simple framework to help you pick the right AI model based on what you need to do, whether it’s writing, strategic problem-solving, or deep research.

Plus, I’ll show you how to combine multiple AI models to get the best results.

5/ Leverage human skills with AI

The often forgotten part of the process.

I’m all for a human-powered future with AI. Not an AI-first operating system. I mean, we’re all human, aren’t we? Don’t answer that one.

I spent months analysing over 20 skills reports in 2024 + 2025.

Each takes in the meteoric rise of AI and how it influences our modern skills. I don’t believe we can talk about skills anymore without those two little letters in ‘AI’.

It’s happening whether we like it or not.

The real question is how does it impact the skills we need to succeed?

I gave you an in-depth analysis on that by revealing the hidden impact of AI tools on skill-building from what we know so far.

From my analysis so far, my bet is firmly on doubling down on our human skills. With each new report I sink my brain into, this only solidifies the need to tap into our most human abilities.

We must be aware of this societal shift, but not consumed by it.

Final thoughts

I still believe the best way to serve your customers (I’ll never call them learners!) is by improving your skills and know-how.

Our industry talks a lot about being strategic partners or getting seats at utterly boring tables, yet it tends to do little to guide people in how to craft the abilities to command such a reputation.

No one is owed it, it’s earned.

The L&D industry (like so many others) is being forced to transform through the latest tech innovations of generative AI. If you don’t want to be staring down the barrel of being obsolete, you need to forget about building more courses and content.

The first step to taking control of your career, its future and the skills you need to navigate it, is the playbook we’ve just unpacked.

Now I’m going to take a breath because I feel like those last few lines could have been from an amazing Ridley Scott directed historical film. Try and beat that AI, I dare you!

Anyway, be smart, invest in yourself, and we won’t all be spending time in our new careers as farmers in 2035.

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

Till next time, you stay classy, learning friend!

PS… If you’re enjoying the newsletter, will you take 4 seconds to forward this edition to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter (and cut through our industry BS with actionable insights).

And one more thing, I’d love your input on how to make the newsletter even more useful for you!

So please leave a comment with:

  1. Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

  2. Your biggest takeaway from this edition

I read & reply to every single one of them!

 👀 ICYMI (In case you missed it!)

  1. The Alan Turing Institute discovers that 40% of public sector work time is spent on activities that could be supported by Gen AI. I’d love to see more research reports like this one, which measure real-life experiments to explore the potential of generative AI.

  2. AI Avatars get improved gestures and expressions, and I’m here for that. Like most AI-powered tools, avatars continue to improve at pace. The new gesture and expression updates from HeyGen caught my eye this week.

  3. Are you letting NotebookLM decide what goes into your audio overviews? Avoid this rookie mistake!. Learn how to customise those mini-podcasts before you hit the ‘create’ button.

  4. I think curation is due for a comeback with all our AI-generated content. While it might be a band-aid, we need something to better navigate the AI drool clogging up platforms everywhere.

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 VIDEO THOUGHTS 💾

When Learning Science and AI Collide

Google released an AI model trained on Learning Science principles about 6 months ago.

It’s now secretly being deployed across a host of its platforms, like YouTube, Google Classroom and as part of its project Astra. You can play with it in Google AI Studio, too.

In this video, join me as we experiment with LearnLM and explore its potential applications for learning.

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