Source: Fortune
Summary
Canva’s AI Discovery Week aimed to help employees explore AI tools, but the company discovered that the bottleneck was not the technology, but human behavior. Employees struggled to give themselves permission to experiment and felt guilty stepping away from their inboxes. Canva learned that deploying tools is not the same as enabling employees, and that people need time to experiment and find use cases that work for their specific roles. The company’s approach to AI training, which includes community-driven adoption and hands-on exploration, has led to significant results, including 26,000 hours of hands-on exploration.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story. Canva’s AI Discovery Week was designed to meet people where they are, with a focus on community-driven adoption and hands-on exploration. The company learned that most AI training fails because it’s too centralized and that community accelerates adoption faster than formal enablement. Canva’s approach has led to significant results, but sustaining momentum is the harder work. The company has built ongoing infrastructure to sustain AI adoption, including an AI Hub and fortnightly AI Forums.
What’s striking is that Canva’s approach to AI training is not about the technology, but about changing human behavior. The company’s leaders recognize that the real challenge is helping teams build enough confidence and fluency to actually change how they work. The AI was never the hard part. We are.
