I asked executives at a workshop to name three words their organisation attached to its AI programme. “Better, faster and cheaper,” they said, “but cheaper gets top billing because it’s the only one you can put a number to by Friday”.
AI gets filed under digital transformation, and the focus quickly turns to cutting costs. It’s an understandable response, but it risks overlooking where AI can create the greatest value.
Revolutionising creativity
Most leaders are running AI like a software project, focusing more on efficiency gains than on how it can help the business grow. But if we focus on cheaper, value is missed and failure gets blamed on AI, the team or both.
Focusing instead on better and faster is where growth comes from. AI is the organisation’s new way to find, serve and keep customers.
How do we do this? By focusing on how AI can revolutionise an organisation’s creativity.
The challenge for L&D is not simply helping people use AI, but helping them use it in ways that strengthen the capabilities organisations need to grow.
AI gets filed under digital transformation, and the focus quickly turns to cutting costs
AI as a creative partner
Two notes of caution and one experiment show how to use AI as a creative partner.
In a recent Training Zone article, Matt Donovan warns that AI can produce competent-looking work without making the person who used it any more competent: “AI creates a shortcut through that [learning] journey. And the problem with shortcuts is not simply that we get somewhere faster. It is what we may have skipped along the way”, he says.
Eric So at MIT Sloan agrees: “To thrive in the age of AI, we have to distinguish between the tools we use and the capabilities we possess”. Both describe what happens when AI does the thinking for you.
However, at Procter & Gamble, 791 employees brainstormed new product ideas, working alone, in pairs, or paired with AI. A person paired with AI matched two people without, and pairs with AI were three times more likely than solo workers to spark a novel idea.
The SAGE framework: a new way to think and innovate
Creative AI experiences are not just tools for speed and efficiency. Immersive AI extends to perspective taking, forcing you to see through other’s eyes, hear objections you’d rather avoid and test ideas in safe yet challenging environments.
In my book ‘How to Outsmart AI and THRIVE’, I present the SAGE model – a model that L&D professionals can use to help people flex their creativity and let AI strengthen it.
The model gives practitioners four levels to work with, each building on the capabilities of the last.
- At the self-reflective stage, learners imagine different perspectives.
- At the AI-guided stage, they debate those perspectives with AI.
- At the gamified stage, they test ideas in dynamic simulations where decisions have consequences.
- Finally, at the enhanced reality stage, they experience those future scenarios immersively before making real-world commitments.
1. Self-Reflective (the Mirror)
Pick one of your toughest challenges and put yourself into the shoes of someone else who cares about the outcome.
For example, if as an L&D professional you are designing a new AI literacy programme, you might spend time thinking like a frontline employee worried AI might replace their job; a busy middle manager who doesn’t have time for training; or a CFO questioning the return on investment.
2. AI-Guided (the Conversation Engine)
Give an AI persona a name, a budget and a grievance, then pitch to it until it stops objecting. It challenges, provokes and never tires. Learners, for example, can use AI as a challenging stakeholder during development programmes.
Perhaps the persona of ‘Sarah’, who is an operations director with a tight budget, and who believes most training is a waste of time. The learner must convince Sarah to invest in a new project management training programme. Each time they present an argument, the AI raises fresh concerns, challenges assumptions, or asks for evidence.
3. Gamified (the Creative Playground)
This stage helps us turn ideas into a simulation with feedback and stakes. Members of the L&D team, for example, could compete to develop the strongest proposal for a strategic learning initiative.
Each round might introduce obstacles such as budget cuts, talent shortages, or new organisational priorities. The AI can be used to help evaluate originality, cost and risk.
4. Enhanced Reality (the Experience Engine)
VR, AR, and digital twins (virtual models of real-world settings and processes) let teams live inside the future scenario before money is committed. The process of immersion reveals what people might otherwise miss.
For example, using VR, managers could enter a digital version of their organisation three years in the future. They see AI copilots supporting employees, new job roles emerging, different patterns of collaboration, and potential points of friction or resistance. Rather than discussing the future, participants experience it.
Pick one of your toughest challenges and put yourself into the shoes of someone else who cares about the outcome
Avoid creativity crushers
A word of warning though: I have watched well-meaning facilitators kill creativity exercises such as these in minutes with five habits I call ‘creativity crushers’. Try not to fall into any of the following traps:
1. The Interrogator
Someone floats an idea and the immediate response is: “What does it cost? Do we have data? We tried that before”.
Challenged like that, cortisol rises, the brain goes offline, and the room learns half-formed ideas are unsafe.
Instead, write the questions on the board, take time to get answers, and let AI build the cost case in parallel as the meeting continues.
2. The Eraser
“Blue sky it. Forget everything you know.” Adult learners share knowledge based on years of lived experience. Blank slates kill their earned cognition.
Instead, start with what has worked. Before the session, share the last three projects and post-mortems, ask what new directions are worth pursuing, then let the people who lived them trailblaze ahead.
3. The One-Shot
“We need the breakthrough by the end of this meeting.” The reality is that 90 minutes isn’t enough.
Instead, call today the ‘seed’ session. Between now and the next meeting, use AI to help cluster the half-ideas and suggest variations, so that the next meeting opens with momentum.
4. The Fortress
“That’s not how we do things here.” “Our customers would never …..”. The brain rejects challenging input before you’re aware of it.
Instead, build on where the impossible already worked elsewhere. Invite an outsider, pitch the new ideas, and listen.
5. The Hijack
“What does the CEO think?”. Stop exploring and start reading the room. Take hierarchy out of the process. Collect ideas anonymously, use AI to cluster and rephrase them, and discuss them on merit before anyone mentions the boss.
Vigilance is the best practice. Each crusher masquerades as sound judgement while doing its damage. Name them on the whiteboard and let anyone call them out. That stops these crushers before they stop you.
