Integrating AI Wisely: Identify the Next Best Step

By Sherazade Langlade, CEO, WPTI

Trying to keep up with AI right now can feel like a full-time job.

Every week brings a new tool, a new capability, a new prediction about which jobs will disappear, and new warnings about what could go wrong, like the one recently issued by a former Anthropic researcher, who warned that AI capabilities may be accelerating faster than our ability to reliably control increasingly powerful systems. 

Meanwhile, staff are experimenting, often on their own. Leaders are being pushed to develop policies, invest in tools, prepare their teams, and anticipate changes to the labor market, all while the technology itself keeps moving.

The pressure to “get AI right” can make it harder to figure out what your organization actually needs to do next.

At WPTI, we believe the answer isn’t to move faster simply because AI is moving fast. It’s to get clear about where you are, what you are trying to accomplish, and what your organization and your people are ready for.

For more than two years, we’ve been helping workforce organizations do exactly that. In the last year alone, more than 30 organizations and hundreds of workforce practitioners have engaged with us through AI Learning Labs, workshops, webinars, assessments, and other learning experiences. We’ve developed our 18-Point Guide for Harnessing AI Responsibly, built an AI Readiness Assessment, and created spaces where organizations can step back from the noise, learn, experiment, and make thoughtful decisions about what comes next.

And one of our biggest learnings is this: There is no single “right” way to integrate AI. But there are better ways to determine what is right for your organization.

That is where WPTI can help: assessing where organizations are today, identifying gaps in readiness, building staff knowledge and confidence, and developing an approach to AI that makes sense for their people, mission, and work.

Instead of starting with “What AI tools should we be using?” we encourage organizations to ask: What are we trying to accomplish? What are we solving for? What are we ready for? And what is our next best step?

Those questions matter because adoption is already happening, whether organizations are ready or not.

In our research, more than 75% of workforce practitioners told us they were already using AI multiple times a week, while 78% said their organizations had no formal AI policies or training. In our most recent AI Learning Lab, 67% of participants were using AI daily, 73% were doing so through personal accounts, and fewer than one in four had access to enterprise tools.

The gap demonstrates that organizations are trying to catch up with technology and their employees. That is why our work increasingly starts with readiness, not adoption.

Our AI Readiness Assessment helps organizations understand where they are before deciding where they should go. Our 18-Point Guide takes that further, offering practical considerations around staff learning, policies, privacy, human oversight, and responsible experimentation.

The broader research reinforces why this approach matters. Brookings Institute has found little evidence, so far, of the sweeping “AI jobs apocalypse” predicted when ChatGPT arrived. Transformative technologies take time to reshape workplaces because technology alone isn’t enough. Workflows, investment, culture, regulation, and organizational practices also have to change.

Jobs for the Future, one of our partners, offers another useful lens: rather than focusing only on which jobs AI may eliminate, look at what happens to the tasks within jobs. What might be displaced? What might be augmented? And where might human capabilities like judgment, communication, and relationship-building become even more valuable?

Other research reminds us that workers are navigating these changes within a labor market where career pathways and access to trusted information are already uneven. AI may make information and guidance more accessible, but more information alone doesn’t necessarily create better pathways.

We are being asked to make choices about a technology that is changing while our understanding of its possibilities, limitations, and risks is changing, too. For WPTI, that makes AI integration as much a change-management challenge as a technology one.

That is why we are focused on helping leaders assess their AI readiness, engage staff in the process, identify policy and knowledge gaps, experiment responsibly, and determine what should come next. You don’t need to have the entire journey mapped out to begin. You just need to identify your next best step.

If your organization is trying to determine what that next step should be, WPTI can help.