Book Brew 187: The AI Workshop Was Great… But Nobody Used It

The workshop ended at 3:00 p.m. Everyone felt energized. People had ideas. Someone called a prompt a "game changer" (🤢 🤮), which is usually when I PItch Perfect-barf mid-sentence while I check the ceiling tiles for a hidden LinkedIn motivational speaker.

The 20-page slide-deck PDF landed in everyone’s inbox, never to be seen again.

Tuesday morning arrived with two client emergencies, 630 unread emails, and a spreadsheet named FINAL-v8-USE-THIS. Everyone just slowly returned to their baseline…the same old process they have been using day in and day out before the training.

The Tuesday Problem

Poor training can often create a temporary bubble.

• People have permission to experiment.
• The examples are clean.
• The instructor seems to know where every button lives.
• Nobody is waiting on a proposal while Teams makes the notification sound that now triggers a small fight-or-flight response.

Then Tuesday arrives carrying a folding chair and ready to drop the People’s Elbow.

• The new AI process has enthusiasm, a few promising prompts, and a PDF nobody will ever read (that is, unless they feed it to AI and ask it for the ELI5 TL;DR version in 3 words or less…sounds like a joke, but I have heard this too many times).
• The old process is a deeply ingrained habit, stubborn to change.

Duhigg explains what the familiar routine has going for it in The Power of Habit:

“Unless you find new routines, the pattern will unfold automatically.” — Charles Duhigg

That sentence could be printed across the top of every post-training follow-up email.

People rarely return to the old process because they hated the workshop, rejected AI, or secretly formed an anti-prompt resistance movement in the break room.

It just happens that their brains recognized the cue: client request, monthly report, inbox emergency…and ran the same old routine they already knew. (I can hear the echos of “But we’ve already done it this way” and I want to throw something)

The PDF Cannot Compete With Muscle Memory

Information can help someone understand a tool.

Repetition, context, and feedback help someone use it when the example is messy and the clock is judging them.

“Change comes most reliably from the small decisions we repeat until they become automatic.” - Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits

Context matters because familiar cues pull familiar behavior forward, especially when people are stressed, tired, or juggling six things at once.

Tuesday morning provides all three conditions before most of us have finished our first cup of coffee.

This is where many AI workshops fall apart. Everyone practices (or says they are practicing while really scrolling through Reddit) on a tidy sample during the session.

Then they return to the real workflow, where:

• The intake form is missing three answers.
• The source document contradicts the client’s email.
• The approved AI tool cannot access the folder everyone assumed it could.
• The output sounds as if a management consultant swallowed a thesaurus.
• The person who knows why Column G exists is on vacation.

Practice With the Haunted Spreadsheet

Useful training needs at least one real workflow in the room.

• Bring the ugly form.
• Bring the contradictory source documents.
• Bring the spreadsheet with the haunted cells and the approval step that apparently exists only in one manager’s memory.

The training should answer questions such as:

1. What starts the workflow? Name the exact cue: a client intake form arrives, a meeting ends, or the monthly report is due.
2. What should the AI handle? Give it a specific role, approved sources, clear instructions, and data boundaries.
3. What should the person handle? Identify the facts, tone, risks, exceptions, and decisions that require human judgment.
4. What happens when the example gets weird? Practice missing information, conflicting sources, and the client who typed their entire life story into the field labeled “Company Name.”
5. Where does the finished work go? Put the prompt, process, output, and next step somewhere people can find without conducting a forensic search of their inbox.

That final point deserves more attention than it usually receives. If the new process depends on everyone remembering a prompt from a boring workshop they didn’t listen in the first place, the organization has created a memory contest with payroll implications.

“Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.” — Atul Gawande

A short checklist, documented workflow, template, or automation can carry the process when Tuesday removes everyone’s spare brain cells. The goal is usable support at the moment of work.

The Human Still Needs an Actual Job

AI adoption can create a second problem when “use the tool” becomes “let the tool do everything and hope nothing catches fire.”

Someone still needs to:

• define the problem,
• choose trustworthy source material,
• notice missing context,
• question confident nonsense,
• and decide whether the result belongs anywhere near a client.

Damien’s video, AI vs. Humans: 7 CORE Human Advantages That AI CAN’T Replicate, walks through the abilities that become more valuable as machines handle more routine work.

Give Tuesday Its Own Training Plan

Before the workshop ends:

• Schedule the first follow-up.
• Pick a small workflow.
• Assign an owner.
• Give the team a place to report what worked, what broke, and what the AI did that made everyone stare silently at the screen.

Then check the process after a week:

• Did people use it?
• Did it save time or create rework?
• Did the human review catch meaningful problems?
• Did employees know where to find the materials?
• Which part needs another practice round?

This Is the Work We Help Teams With

Our Next-Level AI Workshops are built entirely around your needs and your real work as the training material. Your team can bring an actual process into the room, test where AI helps, define the human review points, and build something employees can use after the workshop glow wears off.

PONDER THIS

1. Which human skill should become stronger as AI handles more routine work?

Books

• The Power of Habit — Charles Duhigg
• Good Habits, Bad Habits — Wendy Wood
• The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande