Learning by Doing

How Scouting Wisdom Can Guide our AI Journey

written by

: an image by Ted Tschopp

Table of contents

Table of Contents 📖

Yesterday for Father’s Day, I took Pieter to his first week-long BSA Scout camp. He’s excited, filled with anticipation, and perhaps a hint of anxiety. He knows he has moved up from Cub Scouts into a new adventure—learning knots, mastering the art of fire-building, exploring navigation, and absorbing crucial first-aid skills. The curriculum he’ll engage with this week focuses on the fundamentals of Outdoor Scouting. However, this week isn’t an end unto itself; it will prepare him for what comes next—a focus on the softer skills of leadership, service, teamwork, communication, conflict resolution, respect, and mentoring. Having participated in the program myself as a kid, I know his camp counselors won’t just be instructors; they’ll be attentive guides, sensitive to each scout’s unique story, background, and pace, adjusting and tailoring their teaching to offer personalized paths to mastery.

Recently, Fortune reminded us of something profoundly simple yet easily overlooked—mastering AI isn’t just a skill like fire-building or navigation. It’s a skill that prepares you for what’s next, a way of working where learning with AI is woven seamlessly into the tapestry of your daily tasks. Like learning to speak or ride a bike, this happens naturally, moment by moment. Companies aren’t merely instructing employees on “how” to operate AI; they’re inviting them into a dynamic partnership, where technology and human intuition grow together, deeply intertwined. This isn’t about static training manuals or rigid workshops. Instead, it’s about real-time adaptation, exploration, and discovery alongside the very tools shaping our work.

A New Way to Learn

AI has become your co-creator, dynamically generating content that makes your learning vivid and immediate. Gone are dull, static presentations. In their place, imagine interactive scenarios, simulations responsive to your every move. Learning becomes less about absorbing information and more about experiencing growth in the moment.

Real-Time Guidance and Grace

Imagine an assistant patiently standing beside you, gently providing the exact guidance or checklist you need precisely when you need it. AI can offer you compassionate, continuous support, allowing you to practice new skills safely, free from the fear of costly mistakes, thereby hastening genuine mastery.

Transforming Your Work—Deeper, Richer

AI training isn’t about reducing your role—it’s about enhancing it. AI handles repetitive or high-risk tasks, giving you room to engage your deeper capacities: reasoning, empathy, judgment, and creativity. This shift allows you to perform work that is inherently human, filled with meaning and purpose.

Why Does This Matter to You?

  • Accelerated Learning: By weaving AI directly into your daily routines, you quicken your path from novice to mastery, especially in complex or customer-facing roles.
  • Smart Allocation of Resources: By partnering with AI models that assist and offer feedback on routine tasks, you free up space to engage in deeper journeys—cultivating wisdom, shaping culture, and nurturing leadership.
  • Safer, More Effective Training: In high-stakes environments—compliance, security, client interactions—AI creates safe spaces for you to learn from errors, helping you grow confidently.

The Path Ahead

If you’re wondering how to personally step into this evolving landscape of AI-enabled learning, here’s a guide to help you navigate your journey. This isn’t just about corporate transformation—it’s about your own growth, your rhythm, your pace. These steps invite you to reflect, experiment, and ultimately thrive in partnership with intelligent tools that are here not to replace you, but to help you grow.

Step What You Can Do What You Gain
1. Reflect & Identify Take stock of your role. Where might AI help you learn faster or make fewer errors?  See the posts about WINS from previous weeks. New insight into how your daily tasks can be enhanced and elevated.
2. Partner & Create Team up with colleagues and tech partners to shape AI tools around real challenges. Personalized workflows, tools, and scenarios make your learning come alive.
3. Experiment & Learn Try small pilots—use the AI. Get feedback. Adjust. Repeat. Confidence, fluency, and new ways of solving familiar problems.
4. Share & Grow Share what works, measure your growth, and help build a culture of learning. Visibility, influence, and the satisfaction of shaping our collective future.

Embrace a Human-Centered Future

You aren’t simply adding another tool—you’re reshaping how you learn, grow, and connect. By trusting AI with routine tasks, you create space for meaningful, human-centered development. It’s your journey towards deeper creativity, stronger judgment, and greater autonomy.

A Final Reflection

As Pieter steps into this transformative week at Scout camp, guided by thoughtful counselors who adapt to his personal story, you too are invited into an adventure of growth—one shaped by thoughtful, adaptive AI guidance. Just as he will emerge with new skills and deeper confidence, embracing AI in your work promises similar outcomes: greater mastery, deeper insights, and meaningful human connections. Let’s move forward together, thoughtfully, eagerly, and openly, into this new, hopeful chapter of our shared learning journey.