Everyone is learning AI tools these days, and there are courses and tutorials everywhere. But does learning them actually help at work? Or because you’re faster now, do you just get loaded with more work? That’s a complaint I hear a lot. Recently I’ve been working with a lot of traditional-industry organizations, and I happened to hear a talk on this topic that I found quite illuminating, so I’m sharing it.
• Stage one: saving time, but possibly more tired Learning a few AI tools can save you a lot of time at certain points in your workflow: vibe coding speeds up engineers, text-to-image gives designers more inspiration, and so on. But at this stage you find that after spending your own time and money learning, all you’ve done is save the company time. You finish early, so you get more work, and “the capable do more.” That’s a big reason many people resist learning AI tools.
• Stage two: optimizing processes and creating value To turn what you’ve learned into benefits, a promotion or a raise, the key is upgrading tool use from the personal level to the organizational level. When you can use AI to restructure an entire workflow (like automating repetitive reports, or using an LLM to build templates for organizing customer requirements), your “ability to save time” starts being seen as “creating value,” and becomes leverage for a promotion or a raise.
• Stage three: really changing how work is done The more advanced use is reshaping cost structures with AI, creating value that didn’t exist before with its help. The speaker shared that traditional industries are now learning to use AI tools to crawl and collect information about competitors in the market, then use generative AI to help with initial data cleaning and analysis. In the past, this kind of thing usually had to be outsourced to a consulting firm, or done purely by hand in a week that might not be enough. Now, with AI tools, they can pull together market data and initial insights in an afternoon, even tracking competitors in real time and responding quickly to market changes. This ability to expand an industry’s competitiveness with AI is something many companies couldn’t have imagined before.
The dividends AI brings are obvious. But if a company only demands results without investing in the process, AI transformation easily gets stuck at stage one, because no one will volunteer to bear the cost in money and time. I see quite a few companies now offering paid learning time and learning subsidies, and turning the time saved into rewards. Only by being willing to share the dividend of AI with employees will employees actively change along with you.
I’m curious: does your company currently offer any support for learning AI? Share in the comments 😄