If you spend any time on LinkedIn, it’s easy to come away thinking that the secret to AI success lies in finding the perfect prompt.
Every day there are new lists of tools, productivity hacks and examples of how AI can help us write faster, analyse data more quickly or automate routine tasks. It’s an exciting time, and rightly so. AI is opening up opportunities that simply weren’t possible a few years ago.
But after spending the past year talking to organisations, running workshops and experimenting ourselves, I’ve become convinced that the organisations getting the greatest value from AI have something in common.
They didn’t start with AI – they started with the work.
Rather than asking, “How can we use AI?”, they asked a much more useful question. “What problem are we actually trying to solve?”
That might sound like a small distinction, but it changes everything. For years, one of the core principles behind our work at People Lab has been resisting the temptation to jump straight to solutions. Whether we’re helping organisations redesign employee journeys, improve internal communication or strengthen employee voice, we always encourage clients to spend time understanding the experience they’re trying to improve before deciding how to improve it.
Human-centred design starts with curiosity. It asks us to understand what people are trying to achieve, where they experience friction, what gets in their way and which moments matter most. Only then do we begin exploring potential solutions. AI doesn’t replace that way of thinking – if anything, it makes it even more important!
Technology has always had a habit of accelerating whatever already exists. AI is no different. If a process is confusing, AI will help you complete a confusing process more quickly. If communication lacks clarity, AI can produce unclear communication at remarkable speed. If a team hasn’t agreed how decisions should be made, AI won’t solve that problem. It will simply operate within the same ambiguity.
In other words, AI doesn’t automatically fix poor design, in fact it often exposes it. That’s why the most successful organisations aren’t using AI to paper over cracks. They’re using it to support work that has already been carefully thought through.
Before introducing AI, they’re asking questions such as:
- What are people trying to achieve?
- Which parts of this process create the greatest frustration?
- Where are we asking people to spend time on work that adds little value?
- Which decisions genuinely require human judgement?
- Where could AI remove effort without removing humanity?
Those questions might not feel particularly exciting. They certainly aren’t as eye-catching as the latest prompt library. But they’re the questions that lead to better outcomes.
It’s also why I think AI has reinforced, rather than replaced, the importance of approaches like Employee Experience by Design and Internal Communication by Design. Both are built on a simple principle: understand first, design second, deliver third. That sequence mattered before AI arrived, and it matters even more now.
The organisations making the biggest progress with AI aren’t redesigning their prompts every week. They’re redesigning work. They’re simplifying processes before automating them. They’re becoming clearer about decisions before asking AI to support them. They’re investing time in understanding people’s needs before selecting the technology that might help.
Perhaps that’s the biggest shift AI is bringing to organisations. Not because the technology demands it, but because it highlights something we’ve always known. The quality of our solutions depends on the quality of our thinking.
The organisations seeing the greatest return from AI haven’t abandoned human-centred design. They’ve doubled down on it. Because before you decide what AI should do, you first need to understand what people need.
If you’re exploring how AI can genuinely improve employee experience, rather than simply adding another layer of technology, our free Human + AI for Employee Experience Toolkit brings together practical ideas, questions and resources to help you get started. You can download it here: https://mailchi.mp/60357eaff1d0/humanaiex.
And if you’re trying to move beyond the hype and focus on where AI can create real value, we’d love to talk.
