Leading into AI: A human-first journey toward AI fluency. This is a series of posts in which I’ll share our journey of building AI fluency at Bodine&Co. Yes, we’re still learning. And I’m not afraid to admit that because *everyone* is — and because continuous learning is the world’s new normal. At Bodine&Co, our entire team is learning together, and we’re going to do it in the open. That, to me, is what responsible leadership looks like in this moment.
I’ll start this first post with something you may or may not already know: Over the past year, I’ve been steadily growing my team. Alongside the fantastic humans we’re hiring, we’re pushing ourselves to fully adopt AI, try new things, and deepen our understanding of how to ethically use AI in our day-to-day operations and client work.
I’m primarily focused on the ways that everyone at Bodine&Co — regardless of their role — can leverage AI to amplify their own superpowers. To make time and whitespace for all of those gorgeous ideas and plans running around in our heads. And to make those ideas and plans come to life better, faster.
Section’s recent AI Proficiency Report (Jan 2026) puts helpful language around something I’ve been observing anecdotally in my team. In their study of roughly 5,000 professionals, many people are still early in their AI journey — interested, thoughtful, and learning, but not yet fully integrating AI into their daily workflows. They label 28% of respondents as novices, 69% as experimenters, 2.7% as practitioners, and just .08% as experts.
Inside our company, we’re further along the curve. Our analysis found that the bulk of our team is evenly split between experimenters and practitioners — folks who are using AI to explore ideas, draft content, analyze information, and those who are leveraging it regularly and intentionally as part of how they do their work. I’m proud that we also have multiple experts who are building new AI workflows, using AI to code new products, and generally pushing our boundaries.
That roughly 40:40:20 balance didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of making AI a shared capability rather than a specialized one.
AI isn’t replacing our judgment or creativity. In fact, those are just two of the beautifully human qualities/capabilities we look for in our hires — and that I insist my team exercise alongside their AI collaborators.
A lot of people are talking about AI-first companies. This post might sound like that’s what I’m building at Bodine&Co. And yes, we’re leveraging the heck out of AI. But what I’m building — and what I hope to inspire other leaders to build, too — is a human-first company, amplified by AI.
More to come.
[And yes, I used AI to help me write this post. I also did heavy edits, because my team and I will never put raw AI responses in front of anyone outside of our organization — that’s part of our AI policy, which I’ll talk about in a future post. I also co-write with AI because my brain is awesome. I’m sure your brain is pretty cool, too.]
