Last week at the From Day One conference, I represented Ei on a panel called Activating Learning in the Age of AI. I was joined by L&D leaders doing the fun and sometimes messy work of figuring out how to use AI to move their businesses, and the people at the center of them, forward.

There were so many great takeaways from the conversation, but something that I said seemed to really resonate with the audience, so we thought we’d share that here.

The gist is this: we can think of AI adoption as a progression through a series of stages. And at each stage, you, as a leader, must embody a different mindset.

Stage 1: The Doing Mindset

If you are a leader in this stage, you and all of your team members are doing…a lot. You’re frequently in a state of creative problem-solving. Hiring decisions are made to fill immediate gaps. Customer and employee experiences vary depending on who’s delivering the work. You and your team spend a lot of time reacting to what's in front of you. Strategic work often gets pushed aside.

Before you get down on yourself, being in this stage doesn’t mean that you are a novice. Or a bad leader. In fact, you probably got into your position because of your ability to manage several things at once and produce high caliber work.

Your Leap to Stage 2: Think less about executing on what’s in front of you, and more about mapping the repeatable processes that are involved in getting that work done.

Stage 2: The Dissecting (& Documenting) Mindset

As our colleague Chauncey Nartey likes to say, “You can’t automate what you can’t articulate.” Before you can successfully automate or augment with AI, you need to understand and spell out the processes that exist on your team. What are all the things that each of you do? And within each of those things, what are all the smaller steps or subtasks? Dissection and documentation takes you from “the black box” to a set of articulated processes that can now be delegated or redesigned with new resources.

Your Leap to Stage 3: Start opportunity-spotting. Look for the subtasks within those processes that are ripest for automation or augmentation by AI.

Stage 3: The Designing & (re)Delegating Mindset

At this stage, your systems and processes are clear and visible, so you can make intelligent choices about when and how to marshall support from AI. You can rethink how you’re delegating to both the humans and the AI on your team, applying systems thinking to retool your workflows to prioritize efficiency, productivity, and/or new value creation.

With AI taking on more and more, your people can focus on what humans do best: creativity, relationships, strategy, and oversight.

Your Leap to Stage 4: Move from AI-assisted workflows to AI-managed operations, with humans in a directing role.

Stage 4: The Directing Mindset

In stages 1-3, you are focused on the work itself - whether you’re doing it, dissecting it, designing or delegating it. Stage 4 marks an evolution. As a leader, you move from behind a camera lens pointed at the work, to orienting a compass towards a North Star. With AI-managed workflows in place, your attention is freed up to think about what’s worth doing and what problems are worth solving.

Your Focus Now: Maintain governance, ethics, and human oversight while marshalling resources (AI or otherwise) to help you drive toward your North Star.

Listen to me explain the stages live

Here’s a clip from the panel where I bring the four stages to life in my own words.

So, What Now?

1. Identify your current stage. Try our assessment tool here!

2. Choose one leap that will move you forward and build momentum.

3. Learn out loud—your team needs you to model curiosity, share progress, and normalize experimentation.

Not sure where to start? The AI Leaps program helps you and your org take the right next step. With a clear business case for improving productivity, efficiency, and employee adoption of AI tools, it will pay for itself. Get in touch and let’s map your path forward.