Last week I listed three tactics for organizations to close the gap between their people and their AI tools. This week is the first: use AI to teach AI.
“But Molly, AI can’t replace good learning design!” “But Molly, only our people really understand our people!” I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve thought what you’re thinking… and you’re absolutely right.
AI doesn’t replace your learning and development or enablement team. It lets the people on that team scale their expertise.
Imagine you’re designing a course about how to use Claude chat.
Traditional training would have you design a course, release it in a few months, measure the feedback, iterate, and try again.
But what if you put a Claude Skill1 at the org level, so anyone who says “I don’t know where to start” gets a walkthrough built for their role? Your designers shape what it teaches, and it scales to everyone who asks.
There’s research behind this. A randomized trial at Harvard, published in Scientific Reports in 2025, found that students gained more than twice as much from a custom AI tutor as from an active learning class, in less time. The tutor worked because it was designed around how people learn. Learning design didn’t go away. It moved into the tool. One caveat: those students were learning physics, not job skills.
In the training sessions I’ve run for clients, the ones that work best are the ones where I teach a concept and then have people practice it with AI. In one large rollout, we gave employees a way to spin up an AI tutor tailored to their own job.
Worried about the pace of change on the things you’re teaching? Use AI to give you automated updates when something is out of date.
Having trouble keeping up with the rate of requests for training? Ask AI for a process that automates inquiry responses based on the type of request.
AI has the ability to superpower your team, whoever they may be. And if your team is responsible for teaching AI or enabling an organization to use it more… it gets very hard to keep up without using the same tools you are trying to promote.
Does this all sound amazing but you don’t know where to start with your team? Book a call! I’d love to talk.
1 Claude Skills are a feature in Claude that lets you package a set of instructions and reference files. Claude loads a skill automatically when a request matches the skill’s description, like someone saying they need help getting started. Skills can also tell the chat how to act and what to say. Providing a skill to your whole organization requires a Team or Enterprise plan, and an organization Owner has to upload it.
This week's People Who Know Things episode
This week I was joined by Josh Penzell, founder of Imagination Applied, who started out as a theater director. We talked about directing AI instead of prompting it, from his work on Special Olympics' multilingual Unified Champion Schools Inclusion Academy to why organizations should reward experimentation over time savings.
What I tried this week
I made my own CRM.
One of the things Josh mentioned on the podcast is that he uses up his leftover tokens at the end of the week to have AI do something crazy. So I gave it a try.
I asked Claude to make me an app that would do everything I could possibly need for my business. I now have a CRM, a speaking submission tracker, content management, and more!
Here's why it worked:
I was specific. I asked it to go as over the top as possible, so it came up with some cool features I wouldn't have thought of!
It's connected. I have it connected to my Drive, my calendar, and my transcripts. I even upload my LinkedIn data. It knows enough about me to create helpful things for me.
I iterated. After I had it do the crazy first version, I went page by page and edited each one to make it more useful for me and focus on the best pieces.
Looking to try something new? Ask your AI what it can do for you, and ask it to go BIG!
As Josh said on the podcast, it's not about whether AI can build what you imagine, but whether you can imagine big enough for AI.
One question for you
What was your first aha moment with AI, when it did something you didn’t think was possible? Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
Molly