Stop counting attendance. Count what people build.
Stop counting attendance. Count what people build.
How a large insurer moved nearly 1,000 leaders and frontline colleagues from AI curiosity to AI tools they built for their own work.
Why AI pilots stall
A skilled facilitator can make AI interesting to almost anyone. But enjoying AI isn’t using it. If people leave without finding an application for their own work, nothing changes on Monday.
The typical rollout
- People leave curious
- Evaluations glow
- Reach goes up, relevance goes down
- Attendance is the only number left to report
The lab approach
- Hands-on learning plus real AI tools
- Everyone builds for their own job
- Every participant leaves with at least one AI-enabled tool
- Actions are counted, not attendance
Build real work in the room
Someone who leaves with a half-built tool for their own work has a reason to finish it. Someone who leaves with a certificate doesn’t.
Build a ThinkFirst agent
It interviews each participant in depth about their work.
Find the use cases
ThinkFirst surfaces where AI fits in their own role.
Build a custom agent
Participants conceptualize and build their own Copilot agent.
Commit to AI actions
Specific actions in their real work after each lab.
Reflect and keep going
Short reflections and ten minutes a day of follow-up, tracked in 1st90’s app.
One model, built for each job
A session trying to engage a senior executive, a claims specialist, and a service rep works well for none of them. So the team built one model of good AI practice and adapted the lab to each audience.
LaunchPad
Every leader builds a ThinkFirst agent, then their own custom Copilot agent.
Ignite
Agent-building labs built around processes they own. Every executive reported building their agents successfully.
Online labs
Role-specific versions for five frontline teams, built with 1st90.
Daily follow-up
Short follow-ups after each lab keep the learning and building going.
Nobody on the frontline had to leave the floor for two days. Nobody sat through examples from someone else’s job.
Proof they kept building
The same people rated themselves at the start and again at the end.
Spotting where AI helps is judgment—the hardest part to teach.
Frontline confidence more than doubled, and knowing when to trust AI output jumped 33 points.
67% of frontline participants who started finished the full 11-step path. Eleven steps is a lot to ask of a working adult with a queue.
What they built
An agent that consolidates two monthly reports, assigns cost centers, flags errors, and hands Payroll a clean file.
Two agents: a brainstorm partner, and a challenger whose only job is to poke holes in their ideas.
Co-hosted an AI workshop for interns a few days after their own session.
Turn a few bullet points into a professional, personable customer message.
Compare two spreadsheets to find what’s missing.
Take a second look at case details a first review might have missed.
From the reflections
I have used AI to summarize monthly QA results for my team and provide talking points and action items. This used to take me at least an hour or so, and now it’s done in 10 minutes.
Program participantBy asking it to challenge me, it provided perspectives that I didn’t even consider initially.
Program participantI shared my agent with my team in our weekly call and others have started building agents of their own.
Program participantThree moves for your AI rollout
Make every session a lab
People should leave with something they’ve started building for their own job.
Build for each job, on one shared model
Different formats, same core.
Measure what people build
Not who showed up.
In just 90 days, your people could be showing you what they built with AI—not just telling you they enjoyed the training.
Harness Intelligence
One model of good AI practice, adapted into labs for every role.
1st90
A platform that puts learning inside the workday and tracks what people do next.
Your Advantage partner
Administers the program end to end.
Richard Hodge
Co-founder, Harness Intelligence
An early co-founder of Advantage Performance Group and founder of the Real Learning Company, Richard has continued to contribute his strategic thinking and innovative instructional design throughout his career to multiple organizations including 1st90, Paradox Strategies, and others. His most recent endeavor helps leaders harness the intelligence of their teams and technology to drive business results.
Practice Area: Helping Businesses FlourishHelping Leaders Lead
Tagged with: 1st90 • AI lab • AI leadership • Harness Intelligence
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