Podcast and Takeaways: Should You Require Your Team to Use AI?
Jun 16, 2026
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By Knowledge@Wharton.com
AI for Advisors Podcast: Twenty-five years ago, some professionals embraced spreadsheets and others resisted, until the debate simply disappeared. Artificial intelligence is headed down the same path. Learn why AI-assisted employees will outperform non-AI-assisted ones, why the right question isn’t ‘should everyone use AI?’ but ‘should everyone know how to use AI when it improves their work?’, and an AI Leadership Assessment prompt and a one-task challenge to gauge and build your team’s AI fluency.
Editor’s note: Subscribe and listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast platform.
Key takeaways
- Nobody asks “should my employees use spreadsheets?” anymore. AI is on the same trajectory: What feels like personal preference today is becoming baseline professional competency.
- The gap between employees isn’t intelligence, it’s leverage. Two equally capable team members diverge within six months when one uses AI daily for drafting, meeting prep, and learning new topics, and that gap compounds.
- Stop asking whether AI will replace employees. The more immediate reality: AI-assisted employees will outperform non-AI-assisted employees, and it’s already happening.
- Leaders are asking the wrong question. Instead of “should everyone use AI?” ask “should everyone know how to use AI when it improves their work?” The goal is competence, not forced adoption.
- AI literacy means four things: writing structured prompts (not search-engine queries), critically evaluating and verifying AI responses, protecting client information by keeping PII out, and recognizing when AI shouldn’t be used.
- Run the AI Leadership Assessment prompt: Tell AI you lead an advisory firm and have it ask you 10 questions, one at a time, about usage, policies, training, productivity differences, and barriers, then deliver three strengths, three risks, your biggest gap, and three 90-day steps.
- Try the one-task challenge: Ask every employee to pick one recurring weekly task and spend 30 minutes exploring whether AI can help. Not 10 tasks, just one. Confidence builds from small early wins.
- The killer app is meeting prep: Spend 10-15 minutes talking with AI about the issue a client is facing (never their personal information) and the questions and insights are a step change from before.