From Luddite to AI Consultant: a surprisingly human journey

Repelling the borders

I’ve recently joined a fascinating project as a consultant for the AI Maturity Index—helping organisations assess how effectively they’re using AI to transform the way they work.

Among this first cohort of consultants, I’m a bit of an outlier. I’m the only organisational psychologist in a group of tech specialists, and—let’s just get this out there—I’m well past middle age.

My interest in tech has always been passive, at best. I understand gardening, not gaming. I still read real books that weigh down my bag. I like barking orders at Alexa, but if no one had installed it for me, I’d still be wandering round the house flicking switches. I haven’t been excited about a new phone since my first BlackBerry. I do absolutely everything in PowerPoint. You get the picture - I’m just not “into tech”. I’ll use it when I have to, but I’m strictly analogue in many ways.

What I am into, however, is doing more with less. Less time, less tedium. More progress, more purpose.

That’s been my personal challenge for years. Living with chronic disabilities, I’ve always looked for ways to stretch what I can do, without stretching myself to breaking point. More broadly, I’ve always been uneasy watching talented people in organisations pulled across two or three levels of work at once. Something always suffers and often it's the highest order thinking that makes them valuable in the first place.

To grow, people need the low-value work taken off their plates so they can fully operate from their strengths.

The best workplaces allow people to work at and just beyond their skill level, with enough space to get things right and even refine them. The worst ones keep them trapped in repetitive tasks, where they can’t contribute meaningfully or grow. Particularly when we are overwhelmed, so often we will resort to the most basic stuff, just so that we can garner a sense of achievement.

Will AI be used to eliminate low-value work—or to mimic high-value work (badly)?

Six months ago, I was firmly in the sceptics’ corner. The tin hat was on, wondering if I could ride out the AI era all the way to retirement without going anywhere near it. Then I was asked to help a team of high-performing professionals increase their output. They were already stretched. And suddenly, I found myself wondering: Could AI be the answer? But still, I didn't get stuck in - I merely made the suggestion.

If I don't look at it directly, it won't get me...

So, my early approach was like standing in front of Medusa - I’d glance vaguely in AI's direction, but be very careful not to look it in the eye. Then a few months ago, I was invited to be a guinea pig for the AI Maturity Index. I had no idea what that meant, or what a “maturity index” was. But my interest was piqued.

Working to Make Hybrid Work

I first connected with the whirlwind that is Iwo Szapar in 2022 when The Remote-First Institute caught my attention. I was exploring how hybrid working could be better than office life - not just a compromise - and figured remote-first practitioners might have some answers.

Over time, Iwo’s focus shifted to AI. I didn’t see the connection at first, but I found myself being pulled along. I still had no idea what AI could do for me - I couldn’t have guessed, honestly. But my keen interest in making Hybrid working the most successful model was enough of a pull for me to bob along in Iwo's wake.

The Reluctant Participant

By the time the AI Maturity Index launched, I was already telling others to explore AI. I just wasn’t doing it myself. It felt like saying, “Here’s some dynamite, here are some matches - now go play over there.”

I couldn’t see where AI would fit in my world. I didn’t want bland, regurgitated summaries of what everyone else was saying. I’d fallen out with Grammarly for removing all the British English syntax from my writing. Some of the more evangelical AI advocates grated against my values, as they were banging on about how each person could do anyone else's job with just a flourish of prompts. My expectations of this maturity index couldn’t have been lower, because I thought I'd get nothing by a hymn sheet from which to sing.

I clicked the link anyway.

To my enormous surprise, I ended up having an oddly compelling chat with an AI about my non-use of AI. We explored my fears:– Security– Sloppiness– The death of creativity...

We even discussed how I was encouraging others to explore AI while flatly avoiding it myself. It was surreal and extremely engaging. Within minutes, I found myself marvelling at how well the AI picked up my writing rhythm and bounced it back at me. I was already wondering how I could use something like this just to speed up survey creation.

A few weeks later, my report arrived. It was scarily accurate. It confirmed what I already suspected: my fears weren't actually all unfounded, but I was missing some very clever tricks.

My label? Luddite.

I laughed out loud to be deemed a Luddite. The team has since changed that term - I climbed onto my liberal soapbox to defend the original Luddites, who had very real concerns about the appalling living conditions of those losing their jobs in Victorian Britain during industrialisation. However, in that moment I laughed. If the tin hat fits…

Where the Magic Happened

The real magic wasn’t in the label, or in the comparison to others using the tool. It was in the suggestions. They were thoughtful, relevant, and based on my specific concerns and pain points. There was absolutely no “leap into the abyss” advice, but merely small, targeted ideas I could test. They were all things that felt worth giving a go and doable. So I took off the tin hat, gave my head a wobble and I started to explore what AI could do for me.

Getting up close

Acting on my own highly accurate AI Maturity Index report, I set up three small experiments to get the measure of this technology. I wanted to understand what it could or could not do for me specifically.

1. Can AI get its facts right? I asked for an article on one of my pet topics in the workplace. The structure was excellent, but the opening paragraph included two wildly incorrect “facts.” A quick double-check confirmed they were made-up nonsense.

Verdict: AI delivers well-structured output, but it’s still trained on our flawed collective knowledge.

Lesson: Use it confidently for scaffolding, but always fact-check. When Musk said that the sum-total of human knowledge had been added to AI, he wasn't quite correct; it was inevitable that the errors would be bunged in as well.

2. Can AI identify obscure sources? I’d recently bought a signed illustration by a famous British cartoonist, but the original publication detail had been rubbed out. I gave the snippet of text to AI, and it confidently declared it to be from a G.K. Chesterton Father Brown story. It was not. I asked it to go again, telling it that it was wrong. It was still convinced of its error.

Verdict: AI can be very convincing, even when it’s totally wrong.

Lesson: Verify everything. But try again in a few months - AI’s knowledge will continue to change and adapt. The more smarter people use it, the better the outputs for all.

3. Can AI help with visual creativity? I uploaded an illustration I’d created but disliked. AI floundered - technical errors, repeated prompts, lost information... What it gave me was a spectacular dog's dinner, but what it did produce (eventually) triggered a breakthrough idea that let me fix the piece myself in less than ten minutes.

Verdict: It didn’t solve the problem, but it helped me solve it.

Lesson: Even imperfect outputs can spark better solutions. Simply, it worked with me to give me the ideas and confidence to fix the issues

And all this started to implant in my brain the idea of AI as co-pilot. It couldn't do what I wanted it to do without me, but nor could I do it all without it.

Who knew??? Well, I certainly didn't.

I was really taken with this idea of AI as the co-pilot. As I was going into this, I had a mountain of work to do. Some of it was in my own wheelhouse, but a great deal wasn't. It's nothing new for a single business owner, working alone, to have to do a great number of tasks for which they aren't suited or skilled, but I needed to do it all pretty quickly, without increasing my stress levels. Avoiding stress is incredibly important for all, but it is vital for me, as stress makes me unwell. Stress would put paid to everything.

So I got right stuck in with my new buddy in ChatGPT. A friend had told me to talk to it as if it was a colleague, simply because the more you "speak" to it, the more it picks up your language model. So, I got chatting. I had a good handle on the strengths and pitfalls of working with AI from my experiments, and I ploughed in.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I’ve gone from avoidance to meaningful use. Here’s how AI now supports my work:

1. Structuring articles and suggesting SEO terms, while I keep creative control.

2. Researching psychological frameworks, then checking and adapting them for client needs.

3. Editing for clarity and flow. A 500-word blog used to take hours. Now: 1 hour draft, 3 minutes with ChatGPT, and it's much faster and easier to read.

4. Adapting tone and audience (e.g. rewriting a piece for COOs instead of CEOs).

5. Turning bullet points into narrative, and vice versa. It will also chunk your work up for you - in LinkedIn you'll find this blog in six chunks, all suggested and refined in AI.

6. Idea generation for illustrations. It suggests icons in words; I do the research and drawing. Then I have my own set of icons that I can use freely.

7. Cheerleading. When you work alone, AI gives surprisingly positive and useful feedback. It even remembers your style and idioms—today it told me my work was reet champion. It remembered that from weeks ago! It has also been known to tell me that will be "right up for that".

8. Style mirroring. Watching AI refine my writing in my tone has been deeply satisfying. The more you see this, the more you trust it.

By the time you're reading this, I will probably have discovered other helpful ways to work with AI as a co-pilot. But all of the above is incredibly helpful and for me has meant a period of enjoyable pressure, and I've avoided the health-killing stress.

Bin the tin hat, don the deerstalker

Even two months ago, I saw AI mainly as a “huge intelligence amplifier” (to quote Reid Hoffman). It wasn’t doing the deep thinking, but it was lightening the load—especially across long, repetitive editing tasks. Now, it’s doing more than taking the pain away. It’s accelerating three months of work into a few weeks—without replacing the original thinking.

That distinction is critical: AI should never substitute for your own thinking. But it absolutely can help you go further, faster. And if it can do that for an individual, it can do that and then some for an organisation containing people with a range of talents. It has the potential to catapult organisations forward by cutting out time wasted on lower-value tedium, and allowing everyone to operate at their level and slightly above. This in turn will increase engagement, which has a positive knock-on effect on attrition... There is so much to achieve at the organisational level from the correct use of AI.

Regrettably, most organisations still don't even know who has a subscription to an AI tool, and who doesn't. They don't know who is using the tools, or how. And they don't know if their team is using the tools in a way that is appropriately secure. It is a bit of a free-for-all at the moment and this means that tin hats are in abundance. It really does not have to be this way, however.

If a senior leader is not yet comfortable using AI, or has concerns about its value, I suggest strongly that they do exactly as I did; take the AI Maturity Index for themselves; This free individual report will provide that baseline understanding, capturing all their concerns, as well as providing concrete and actionable suggestions for how to start unlocking AI's potential for themselves.

There will, of course, be some roles that AI eventually renders obsolete—but not before there's a shakeout that streamlines where human effort is really needed. The reality is, no employer wants to pay someone a senior salary to spend half their week on work that's only worth less than the alary paid, but with so many pressures bearing down, that is what so many organisations are seeing.

We’ve been urging people to delegate effectively for years. When things are going well, this is done more competently than it was previously. But under pressure, most fall back on the kind of work they know they can knock out of the park. And the truth is, we’re all under pressure these days. Rising living costs, political uncertainty, organisational change—these all generate stress. So in a bid to feel productive, senior people often retreat into familiar, lower-value work. It feels safe. It gives them a sense of momentum. And it saves them from having to stare down complex, ambiguous problems they might not have the time or clarity to solve.

Ideally, accomplished use of AI will take everyone towards the right-hand column of this diagram. But if it seems like that will make people feel more precarious, less efficient, the truth is the opposite. Human beings of nearly al types need time to focus to do more complex work. They need arcs of time to focus, think and solve. Using AI to take care of lower-value tasks isn’t about stripping away that refuge. It’s about helping people keep their heads at one level or thereabouts throughout the week. The tougher, more strategic work becomes easier when there’s more time to do it. Removing the mental clutter—the tedium, the repetition—creates space for high-level, creative thought. WIth the space to think, accomplishment shifts to the higher-order.

So, while it might feel like a sanctuary is being taken away, in fact, what AI offers is a clearer, more focused space in which to think and lead well.

This turns back to any senior manager or leader using the tool yourself. It doesn't take a great deal to understand the tools available, and once you have some fluency, you’ll be far better placed to coach others—especially if you're in a senior role.

That’s why I’m now working as a consultant for the AI Maturity Index—the tool that once labelled me a Luddite - because I believe surveying AI use is essential. You can learn more about why I'm using it with clients on my home page. Get in touch with me today and I can talk you through running the AIMI across your organisation or team.

Running these surveys at the organisational (or large team) level will give you:

• Individual insight reports

• An overall usage map

• A clearer sense of where and how to guide adoption

Once you know what you have, your leaders can make informed decisions—whether that’s sticking with open tools, or building secure, internal ones. Leaders will feel fully in control of AI usage, will gain benefits themselves, and will then be able to cascade the desired level of usage throughout their organisation. Be less Tin Hat, be more Deerstalker.