AUA: What Should L&D Do About AI Right Now?
About this episode:
Original Air Date: March 2 2026AI pressure is landing squarely on Learning & Development teams. Execs want “future skills”…yesterday. The tension? How do you stop churning out more courses and start building real capabilities in the age of AI?
In this AUA mini episode, Rodney and Sam share the first moves they’d make if they were leading L&D right now. From getting hands-on with workflow automation tools to shifting from tool training toward systems thinking and experimentation, they outline how L&D can move from reactive skill provider to strategic capability builder.
Mentioned in this episode:
“recent change skills episode”: AWWTR Ep. 42
Greg Shove: AWWTR Ep. 41
In this episode:
Rodney Evans
Sam Spurlin
Listen now:
Episode transcript:
Rodney Evans:
Hey y'all, welcome back to At Work with The Ready. I'm Rodney Evans and that guy is Sam Spurlin.
Sam Spurlin:
Hello, everybody.
Rodney Evans:
Every other week we are tackling one tough thought-provoking listener question sent to us by you and sharing a few ideas that might help. Let's get right to it. Sam, what have you got for us this week?
Sam Spurlin:
All right. This week's question is, "I lead L&D at a big company and your recent episode about change skills really hit home. We are facing-"
Rodney Evans:
Thank you.
Sam Spurlin:
"... even more pressure from our exec team this year to figure out future skills in the age of AI. And we are getting pulled into strategy conversations we've never really owned before. If you were leading L&D right now, what are the first moves you'd make to start showing up to this conversation differently so we can shift from churning out more courses to strategically building capabilities?" What do you think?
Rodney Evans:
If I were you, I would first get my own hands real dirty with AI. So I've really been on one about this recently, but there are now so many really easy to use tools like Relay and n8n for doing workflow automation. I think if you haven't tried to build something, then it's very difficult to speak credibly about what skills are needed. Because inherent in building something is the skill to know what kind of thing to build and how the technology works. And it's not just about fidelity with the tooling, it's understanding the inputs and the outputs and the ways of working and the architecture and the use cases and a bunch of other stuff. And so, I think that like actually learning how to do something beyond chat is something that if I'm at the table talking about AI, is table stakes.
Why playing “catch up” is the wrong AI strategy
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. I think to take it a step further, if you're doing what Rodney just said, the other thing that you are probably inherently doing is already trying to see what's coming around the corner. And I think a lot of folks in your position, we all have this kind of pervasive sense of like, "Oh, I'm behind."
Rodney Evans:
Yeah.
Sam Spurlin:
Everybody feels behind-
Rodney Evans:
Everybody feels behind.
Sam Spurlin:
... in AI stuff. And I think trying to feel no longer behind is different from trying to get proactive about where things are heading. And what I think about is all of those folks who maybe made really intricate prompt engineering courses and trainings in the last year that are more or less like, that's not where the juice is anymore. These tools have moved beyond needing this kind of like esoteric sorcery language to make them do things. And that's not where we should be.
So if you're focused on like, "How do I not get behind or how do I feel no longer behind?", I think you actually miss where you're trying to go. And that means creating a point of view for yourself about where all this is headed and trying to disprove it and check in with other experts and really kind of put on your knowledge, knowledge... Why am I saying knowledge leader? Thought leader.
Rodney Evans:
Your knowledge hat?
Sam Spurlin:
Thought leader. Your thought leader hat, which is gross maybe. But I think it puts you in a position to be prepared to have these kind of more strategy or strategic conversations.
Rodney Evans:
Yeah. These more strategy conversations. We shouldn't be doing this-
Sam Spurlin:
Word are hard.
How to build a point of view by curating trusted sources
Rodney Evans:
... on a Friday afternoon. Yeah. Yeah, very related, but a piece of advice I've been giving a lot of people lately is, find a couple of sources that really resonate for you around AI expertise and consume a lot from them rather than sort of... I've kind of stopped even looking at LinkedIn because everybody's just like, "Here's my hot take on AI." And I'm like, "Shut up. This is boring." I follow a very small handful of people. And I'm going to tell you guys who so that if it's useful to you, you can just start with this group.
So I follow Ethan Mollick, I follow friend of the show/Section AI CEO, Greg Shove, and also Scott Galloway's AI takes. I read everything that Chase Adams, who is Aaron's Murmur Co-Founder, puts out about AI. I follow the Instagram account, Evolving AI, and I read the Morning Brew AI daily newsletter. And that's about it. And I feel like between those sources, which is not in aggregate that many words in a week, I know enough. I know enough to experiment and know what's coming tooling-wise and what's happened in the last seven days that's interesting.
So I think as you try to shape a point of view, which is the job, if you're being asked to show up to the table and be part of the strategy conversation, your job is to have a point of view. Go deeper with a few sources that are really good, rather than sort of skimming headlines from 30 things that are not that good. And you'll probably find yourself more able to have provocations, clarity, discernment around the domain that's going to give you a different level of authority in the room.
Why tool-agnostic skills matter more than any single tool
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah. My last thought is to get as tool agnostic as possible in how you're thinking about this. So, what are the capabilities that are going to be truly needed regardless of any specific manifestation of AI? And I would start there. That's going to be valuable no matter how this all ends up shaking out in the end. And I'm thinking about things like, how do we see our organization in ways where we can find places to intervene with AI? So that systems thinking around the organization itself, I think is actually a bit of a prerequisite for being able to use AI really well. The idea of being able to design and run and experiment, both very small, but also kind of more at the team level, self-efficacy, just in general around new tools and things of that nature. Those are all relevant beyond just any specific AI thing.
All right, that's it for this mini. If you've got a question of your own, hit us up at podcast [at] theready [dot] com.
Rodney Evans:
We will see you back here next week for a full episode of At Work with The Ready. Thank you so much for listening.