How Teams Can Use AI to Work Smarter: A Practical Action Plan
You’ve probably seen a million headlines about how AI is transforming the way teams and individuals work every day. But with so many tools and so much hype, it's hard to know where your organization or team should start.
When working with our clients, we often take a team-level approach to AI adoption, starting with a simple question: “What do you do every day, and how could AI help?”
This approach enables teams to identify the most effective and impactful ways to incorporate AI into their daily work. Want a step-by-step guide to implement this approach with your team? Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Ground the Plan in Real Work
Schedule a working session and ask each team member bring their job description, task list, and their to-do list. These lists keep the session focused on what team members actually do on a daily basis, which is often where you will find the most opportunities for efficiency.
For each participant:
- Break down their workflow into repeatable tasks
- Identify areas of friction or time loss
- Recognize where AI tools for employee productivity could help
This approach leads to personal, practical insights rather than vague AI aspirations.
Step 2: Map AI to the Tasks
Once tasks are mapped, assess what AI can do:
- Automate: Can a task be completely handed off to AI?
- Augment: Can AI make the task faster, easier, or more accurate?
- Assist: Can AI support better decision-making or insight?
This clarity helps people feel less overwhelmed and more empowered. It turns AI from a scary black box into a helpful assistant.
Step 3: Build the AI Action Plan
Now it’s time to put strategy into action. Here’s what we include in each team’s custom AI plan:
- Tool Selection: Identify relevant AI productivity tools—from writing assistants to task automation apps—tailored to the team’s needs.
- Training & Confidence Building: Guide teams through the use of each tool, with an emphasis on experimentation and ease of use.
- Create Space for Learning & Sharing: Many of our clients launch their own AI lunch and learns or “Lean Coffee” sessions after the workshop. These gatherings give teams space to share what’s working, ask questions, and keep learning together. One client even launched an ongoing series called "AI Grub & Grow", dedicating time for collaborative experimentation.
- Collaboration & Culture Building: AI works best when it’s integrated into team culture. Set up workflows to share templates, prompts, and quick wins so success spreads across the team.
- KPIs & Progress Tracking: Define what success looks like. This can vary significantly based on your organization and its goals. Some teams want to complete tasks faster, while others want more output or improved customer engagement. Once you know what matters, you must determine how to track it and how often you will review it.
- Timeline & Budget Guidance: Your AI rollout doesn’t need to be expensive or massive. Budget for quick wins, start small, and scale thoughtfully.
Real-World Use Case: Marketing Without Compromise
One team we worked with—a marketing department known for its longform thought leadership—was hesitant to use AI for fear it would lower their content quality. Together, we developed an alternative plan that allowed their team to leverage AI without compromising quality. Strategies included:
- Using AI to summarize whitepapers and studies into tailored versions for different audiences (e.g., execs vs. analysts)
- Generating social media posts to promote content across channels
- Building email campaigns automatically from newly released research
Start Small, Win Fast, Scale Smart
If you’re trying to figure out how to start using AI at work, the team-level approach is one of the fastest ways to build momentum. It’s low-risk, hands-on, and people-first.
You can follow the steps above internally, or if you’d rather speed things up and benefit from expert guidance, engage with Lokion to create your custom AI Acition Plan.
Want to see how AI could fit your team’s day-to-day? Let’s Connect. We offer free 30-minute AI readiness calls to help teams find their best starting point.
“Lokion's AI Action Plan helped us wrap our heads around how to best use AI in our business. With all the rapid change in the AI world, we needed to figure things out, but wanted to do it efficiently. They facilitated a discussion that not only taught us things we didn’t know, but offered a structured way to prioritize what we were interested in pursuing.”
FAQs
Q: How can teams start using AI at work?
A: Begin by mapping out day-to-day tasks, then assess which can be automated or improved using AI tools. Build a small action plan focused on one or two wins and expand from there.
Q: What are the best AI tools for team productivity?
A: It depends on the workflow, but popular tools include ChatGPT, Jasper, Grammarly, Notion AI, and tools like Zapier for task automation.
Q: How do I get my team comfortable using AI?
A: Normalize experimentation. Create learning sessions like lunch & learns. Share wins. Offer low-pressure ways to try new tools together.
That’s why Lokion developed a hands-on, team-level approach to building a practical AI action plan for workplace efficiency.