AI: Lean in, grow with it, and raise the bar

A year ago, many colleagues at Quadient were quietly asking some version of the same question: “Is AI coming for my job?” It’s a valid question, and it’s one that we decided to address head on.

To help our people become more confident with using AI, we decided to build our own framework and governance, designed so that adoption would grow from our teams’ own energy rather than from a corporate mandate. Today, the conversation around AI is very different, and people at Quadient are asking, “How do I get better at using this?”, and even, “Could this be part of my next role?”

By giving our people the room to experiment, they began to learn where AI could help them, both in and out of work. These benefits brought about a shift in mindset that has made it easier for AI to be adopted across the company.

I lead our AI program together with our Chief Information Officer, Nina Tatsiy. We’ve learned that People & Transformation and IT must work hand in hand to roll out this kind of technology. Nina and her team carry out some of the hardest work in the whole journey, including choosing the right platforms, protecting the company’s data, connecting AI into the systems we run on every day, and building a foundation that can scale as our ambitions grow.

As Nina’s partner, my role, and that of the People & Transformation team, is to lead the transformation around it: helping Quadient reinvent itself and changing how our people get work done. That means building skills at every level, rethinking roles and ways of working, and creating a culture where people feel safe to try something new and share what they learn.

Quadient is partnering with customers on their own digital transformation, all the while transforming how we work ourselves, and that change lands on people who already have busy days. AI helps us deliver that transformation, and it only works if the people doing the work choose to use it.

Start with room to experiment and have fun

Curiosity is free, but time isn’t, and most people don’t have the time to experiment while the business is demanding they get more done than ever, and faster. So this year, we gave every manager a wide-open AI goal. We asked them how can AI make your job, and your team’s day, a little easier? While some people loved the freedom, a few looked at me like I’d handed them a blank exam paper, but both reactions taught us something.

While every euro we invest in AI should earn its keep, returns follow capability, and this only grows when people have permission to try things out, and to make mistakes.

In June we ran an AI month, the first initiative of its kind across our entire company. It was a big deal, an experiment, and it took a coordinated effort across Quadient to pull off, complete with challenges, ideas and, yes, prizes. AI adoption jumped during the month, and after the awards were handed out people kept on using it. Months later, usage is still climbing. When AI makes your day easier, you don’t need a trophy to come back to using it.

Make it a team sport

People learn from their manager and their teammates far more than from a corporate presentation, and from the start, my core conviction was that momentum around AI would come from people teaching each other. People learn by experimenting in their personal lives, from the stories they see on social media and from what their friends are telling them about. For formal training, learning platforms are the right place, but for adoption, we need something else: excitement, team energy and a variety of content in bite-size pieces.

We’ve built our AI program focused on supporting the journey of our employees. Our AI Council, ambassadors and AI builders are there to help people when their ideas get ambitious. We don’t need everyone at Quadient to have technical knowledge, but if they have an idea, they can turn to colleagues with the technical skills to help build it.

As leaders, we need to try out AI ourselves, and share what we learn, including what goes wrong (and I’ve made my fair share of mistakes). People follow what we do far more than what we announce.

Freedom works best with guardrails so that people can move fast, but also in a safe and secure manner, so our cybersecurity, legal, data privacy and AI center of excellence stay central. These safeguards reflect our approach to compliance, our ethics and Quadient’s culture.

Raise the bar on quality

After our recent LinkedIn Live, one viewer sent me a message saying, “I don’t know how I coped before AI, and I don’t know how I am coping with AI.” The comment made me laugh, because it’s exactly how I feel, too. One of my biggest pet peeves is work that’s come straight from an AI tool without a human ever reading it. The sheer volume of output has exploded, and that makes quality more important than ever. While we give our people the freedom to experiment, they know this comes with ownership of the end result.

While AI often saves time, that’s not always the case, and some things take me longer now. That extra time goes into innovation and creativity, including exploring more ideas, testing out my thinking and getting to better answers. AI also changes how we organize ourselves, so that when the AI has done its part, our people check the work and put it into practice.

A year ago, people were asking whether AI would leave them behind, but now they’re asking how to grow with it, and that’s the progress I care about most. Our job is to make sure the answer is always the same - lean in, and we’ll grow together.