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How to introduce AI in your company: Start with experimentation, not strategy
Before you draft a roadmap or host a strategy session, Hendrik van Zwol suggests a different first step: let people play.
People think they need to understand AI before they can use it. But you don’t read the manual before using Google. You just use it; and learn as you go.”
Most companies rush to write AI policies before letting people explore. Hendrik van Zwol flips that logic. From his perspective, culture drives adoption, and policy can come later as the strategy won’t matter if people aren’t curious or comfortable.
The various workshops Hendrik runs aren’t lectures. They’re sandboxes. People tinker with prompts, remix copy, generate images, and laugh when it goes wrong. This freedom breaks down the fear barrier and gets people thinking creatively. He explains that AI isn’t magic. But when people try it without pressure, they experience a kind of magic: the thrill of possibility.
Why humans still matter in the age of AI
We tend to talk about AI as either a savior or a threat. But Hendrik reframes the relationship in more grounded terms:
Treat AI like a brilliant, fast-working intern. It helps with the heavy lifting, but it still needs your guidance.”
This mindset encourages ownership and reduces reliance. The AI can offer inspiration, rewording, suggestions, but you, the human, make the final call. This is where trust is built and true collaboration begins.
According to a 2023 report by McKinsey, companies that combined AI systems with human judgment saw up to 40% higher efficiency gains than those relying solely on automation. The reason? AI is excellent at pattern recognition, repetition, and speed. But only humans bring ethical reasoning, emotional intelligence, and contextual understanding to the table. The real power lies in the blend; where humans define the “why,” and AI helps with the “how.”
Additionally, the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs report predicts that while AI will automate 85 million jobs, it will create 97 million new ones. These new roles prioritize uniquely human skills: emotional intelligence, ethical decision-making, creative thinking, and cross-disciplinary leadership. In short, AI doesn’t reduce the need for people; it raises the bar for what only people can do.
AI and creativity: How to get better results through conversation, not commands
Many worry that AI will dilute originality or homogenize ideas. Hendrik sees the opposite. In his view, AI isn’t replacing creativity; it’s remixing it. It shows you new angles, perspectives you hadn’t thought of. As such, Hendrik encourages people to think of AI as a springboard, not a script. By prompting AI with variations, tones, or constraints, users often end up with sharper, more diverse results. It’s not about hitting ‘generate’; it’s about asking better questions:
Don’t just command AI. Converse with it. Ask: What am I missing? What’s another way to frame this? That’s where the gold is.”
This is backed by a Stanford University study in 2024, which highlighted that users who approached AI tools interactively through iterative back-and-forth prompting, produced significantly more creative and accurate outputs than those who submitted single one-shot commands. Treating AI like a conversation partner rather than a tool boosts engagement, learning, and results.
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