How to brief a team on AI before you train them

People arrive at AI training with nothing to try it on, and that is a decision somebody made by not making it.

Key Takeaways

• A one hour briefing a week before training changes what people bring into the room.
• The briefing should name tasks, not tools, because a task is something a person already recognises.
• It should be run by the manager rather than the trainer, so it reads as an instruction rather than a pitch.
• Anyone who cannot name a task to bring is telling you something useful before the money is spent.

The evidence

A session works when somebody in it has a task they already resent. They know how long it takes, they know what a right answer looks like, and they can tell within a minute whether the tool did anything. Nobody has to invent a brief for them, and inventing the brief is the hard part of the work.

A session goes flat when the room is full of people who were told to attend. They have no task in mind, so the trainer supplies one, and a supplied example is always easier than real work. Everybody leaves having watched something succeed on a problem they do not have.

The difference is set before the day starts. So run the briefing a week out, keep it to an hour, and cover three things. First, which parts of this team’s work are in scope, named as tasks rather than as tools. Second, an instruction to bring one real example each, with the actual document or spreadsheet. Third, what is not allowed near these tools, because somebody will ask and a vague answer gets remembered as permission.

Whether you are running one of our set courses or a bespoke programme built from your own processes, the briefing is the same hour and it is the cheapest part of the whole thing.

What follows

Put the briefing in the calendar before you book the training, not after. If a team cannot between them name six tasks worth bringing, that is worth knowing now rather than on the day.