AI summit for HR leaders
How a global agribusiness prepared 50+ HR leaders to lead the company through AI
Our client is a global agribusiness whose workforce is mostly on the front line. Its HR leaders had just been through a major change to the operating model, and AI was starting to show up in every part of the business, faster than most people expected. HR was being asked to lead the people side of that change.
HR leaders were already carrying a lot.
They train, develop, and support the workforce, and over the last several years they had absorbed one change after another. Now they were being asked to guide the organization through the next one.
A new matrix structure.
After a recent reorganization, HR business partners and centers of excellence were working in a new matrix, and their roles were still changing.
A mostly frontline workforce.
With most employees in frontline roles, AI would change jobs and skills differently than it would in a typical corporate office full of knowledge workers.
Fear was running ahead of facts.
Employees were asking “Will this replace me?” and “Do I even have to use it?”, and HR leaders were often the first people they asked.
A need for hands-on practice.
HR leaders had attended plenty of conferences. This time they needed to leave with something they could do on Monday, in the approved tools they would be expected to champion.
The company wanted its top HR leaders to lead their people through the changes of this 4th industrial revolution.
A custom, hands-on leadership summit
We designed the summit with the company’s HR leadership around the theme of courage, commitment, and cooperation.
- 01
Hands-on AI Fluency 101, on the company’s own tool
AI Fluency 101In a guided AI Lab, every participant used the company’s approved enterprise AI tool to work through real HR scenarios. Leaders learned our prompting formula, set up personal instructions, and built a prompt playbook they could come back to.
In a team challenge called “Zero to Pitch”, each team invented a company with AI and pitched it in 90 seconds, so the first practice felt energizing instead of intimidating.
- 02
Responsible use, learned against the company’s own policy
Responsible useParticipants worked through realistic HR situations and checked each one against the company’s AI policy. The principles were simple: use approved tools; AI informs, but people decide; you own the output and must be transparent.
- 03
A keynote on fear of replacement
KeynoteThe opening session traced four industrial revolutions, with data on jobs created and skills displaced, and argued that AI should be used to augment people’s work rather than to push them for more output.
- 04
Each leader on the maturity model
Maturity modelEach leader placed themselves on the four dimensions of our proprietary maturity model, then discussed where their role needed them to be and what was holding them back.
- 05
The group’s commitments
Leadership summitA world cafe took on the questions HR was not yet asking, and a leadership lab looked at each person’s next chapter. A graphic recorder drew the sessions live, and the group left with the finished mural and a set of shared commitments.
Four lessons from the summit
Fear of AI was fear of losing identity.
The strongest moment of the summit came from giving leaders a story in which change did not have to mean loss. People reach for AI when they see it make them better at their craft.
Practice builds fluency.
Repetition was the most important lesson. People build fluency by practicing on real work in an approved tool, and chasing the newest model does not help them get there.
Present AI as a panel of experts.
A productivity pitch loses the room. Describing AI as a panel of virtual experts available to every employee makes people feel safer and more willing to experiment.
HR’s job is moving from managing resources to building capabilities.
When AI can extend someone’s skills overnight, a resume no longer caps their potential. HR leaders who understand that can redesign roles, learning, and culture around it.
After the summit
The summit brought 50+ HR leaders from across the organization, including international colleagues, together for a day and a half of hands-on learning. The response from the company’s HR leadership was overwhelmingly positive. Leaders left with practical skills in an approved tool, shared terms for responsible use, and a clearer sense of where they and their teams stand on AI fluency.
The HR leadership team has since asked how to bring the same experience to the wider HR function, and we are working with them on that next step.
If your people leaders will be guiding the organization through AI and have never had the time to use it themselves, that is the first gap to close.
Train them hands-on in the tools they will champion, before anyone else. Ground the training in your own policies and your own language, and give them a way to talk about the change that makes it exciting instead of a chore.
More examples of our work
See all examplesGive your people leaders the experience first
In a 30-minute briefing, we’ll talk through how your leaders could experience AI in your own tools, under your own policies, before they’re asked to lead it.
You’ll talk with a partner, and there’s no commitment.