Most professionals and organizational leaders don’t have the time to keep up with the nonstop flood of new AI tools and updates, let alone figure out which ones are actually useful. That’s where an External AI Integration Specialist comes in. Part coach, part sherpa, they help teams navigate the chaos, build tailored training, and guide the organization through its AI transformation in a focused, sustainable way.
AI Leadership – Fiona Passantino, 11 APR, 2025
Who has the time to (AI) transform??
About 37% of C-Suite leaders believe that their workforce has the AI knowledge and skills needed to keep pace with the rate of change going forward[i]. But ask employees and it’s another story altogether; only 17% of employees agree that they have adequate training and expertise to make good on the promise of AI efficiency gains.
It’s a part-time job just keeping up with the lightning-fast developments in AI. New applications are released on a near-weekly basis. The big players like OpenAI, Google or Meta release models faster than they can be road-tested, mostly to capture the news cycle and grab our attention for the next 24 hours.
Who has time to sift through all this noise, looking for a signal? Which working professional, already pulling overtime on a regular basis, has the nine hours per week to process all the information while maintaining a basic, foundational understanding of AI to compartmentalize the changes? How can you know which tool is practical, time-saving and sustainable, and which is empty hype? What model or package will genuinely save your team time and busywork, and be worth the investment of money and time? And, is your team equipped to take on an AI Transformation Journey in the first place?
The risk of doing nothing
Not training your people can also mean that you expose your organization to data safety issues. Without AI training, you might treat an AI prompt window as you would a search engine. But it’s not the same thing; data placed in an AI engine gets rocketed halfway around the world, torn apart in massive data centers, kept intact, and reconstituted. All food for the next generation of AI models.
A good coach is there to collapse time. You would never attempt to climb the K2 without a good sherpa accompanied by a willing LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI; careful! They spit!). A good sherpa will take you on the paths that lead somewhere, helping you reach the information and access what you need in your specific context to get to where you want to go in a solid and sustainable way. A good AI Integration specialist will guide you through your transformation during every stage of the journey, as well as after the “Big Bang” of your organizational transformation, to check in periodically to support the next stages.
The first step is determining the current level of AI maturity in the organization. Where are you in the journey, relative to your competition, and the expectations of your customers? How much ground needs to be covered, what is a realistic roadmap, and constellation of benchmarks? What budgets are available for the transformation, and how do we measure success?
The external AI coach
During these early beginning stages of the transformation, up to and including the “Big Bang”, there will likely be a greater need for an external specialist, or several. There will be training days and work sessions, large awareness-raising all-hands events and an outward flow of communication explaining the journey to every level of the organization.
The external integration specialist keeps the focus, knows the questions to ask and is able to prepare both professionals and leaders for the next stages in the journey. This is the person to audit the current state of data, architecture, readiness, culture and identify the talent gaps. They coordinate internal teams, determine the content for multi-level awareness training and help build the company stack. Training material will need to be designed for every individual organization and therefore custom-built, so that it fits neatly within the business context, aligned with the organization’s use cases and customer needs.
What AI tools will be needed to best fit the organization is a key task of the AI coach. Once the initial phases of the integration project are over, the External AI Integration Specialist will be occupied with setting up in-house will play a large role in the ongoing training needs of the individual teams as time goes on. Each team’s use of AI will vary, depending on what it does – some will require full multi-modality, while others will only need generative text. Some will be writing and testing code while others will focus on video or audio production.
Bringing in an External AI Integration Specialist isn’t just about managing a tech upgrade. It’s about setting your people up for success in a fast-changing world. With the right guide, your AI transformation becomes less about chasing trends and more about making smart, strategic moves that align with your goals. From initial awareness to long-term adoption, the journey is smoother, safer, and far more effective when someone’s walking the path with you.
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About Fiona Passantino
Fiona helps empower working Humans with AI integration, leadership and communication. Maximizing connection, engagement and creativity for more joy and inspiration into the workplace. A passionate keynote speaker, trainer, facilitator and coach, she is a prolific content producer, host of the podcast “Working Humans” and award-winning author of the “Comic Books for Executives” series. Her latest book is “The AI-Powered Professional”.
[i] McKinsey (2025) “Superagency in the workplace: Empowering people to unlock AI’s full potential” McKinsey AI Report https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/superagency-in-the-workplace-empowering-people-to-unlock-ais-full-potential-at-work