AI as your new team member
- Jen Ryan
- Jun 24
- 2 min read
In April, we “officially welcomed” our newest team member, AI. We hadn’t actually advertised a role, but had heard such good things that we arranged to meet.
Our APAC team is located across Australia so much of our collaboration and support is virtual. We appreciated AI’s willingness to spend a little time with each of us as an introduction. Collectively we concluded that we could definitely see potential value, but recognised that we’d need to work with a more dynamic role definition than usual.
That agreed, onboarding was quite simple and we’re really involving our new “all-rounder” to quietly but substantially change the way we work.
As consultants and practitioners, we enjoy facing complex challenges that require creativity, precision, and flexibility. What we’ve discovered is that instead of starting from scratch, we can leverage AI to create high-quality drafts for things like marketing content, planning frameworks and converting ideas into visuals and presentations. We can research through questioning what would have taken other search engines much longer. We can adapt and refine to turn our initial thoughts into polished, professional outputs more efficiently.
Of course, we’re still early in our working relationship and sometimes we have to be firm and set boundaries:
“For future responses, I would like you to keep in mind that AI does not prioritise or make decisions. Humans do. Its role is to augment human thinking, not replace it.”
With other team members this feedback would have required several more delicate conversations, but within seconds AI politely replied:
“Understood – and fully aligned. I’ll ensure all future responses clearly reflect that AI augments, not replaces, human judgement and decision-making. Thanks for the guidance – it strengthens the clarity and integrity of your messaging.”
And on we go. Every experiment is a learning opportunity and we’re discovering more about how we can integrate AI seamlessly into our ways of working without losing the human touch that makes our approach unique.
As we continue experimenting with AI, I’d love to hear how others are integrating it into their teams. What’s working for you? Where have you found AI to be most helpful in your day-to-day work?
Let’s share our experiences and keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
