How to Build an Inclusive Culture That Welcomes AI

Joseph Frost is an Entrepreneurs’ Organization member in Nebraska and the founder of yorCMO, which offers fractional chief marketing officer services for companies that want continued and predictable growth. Below he shares practical advice for building workplaces that are inclusive of AI.

When you hear the phrase “inclusivity in the workplace,” you typically think about people—diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Yet, now there’s a new team member entering your organization that’s being met with the same exclusionary behaviors you’ve worked so hard to eliminate: artificial intelligence. The way people react to AI—dismissive because it’s unknown, fearful it will take their jobs, or excluding it from strategic decisions—mirrors challenges with human inclusivity. Your team’s response to AI directly impacts your ability to scale and innovate.

The spectrum of AI adoption

Organizations fall somewhere on a spectrum. On one end, companies like Salesforce have fully embraced AI inclusivity. On the other end, there are businesses that refuse to consider AI, believing it has no value. The middle ground is where most people live, trying to understand implementation.

From inspiration to integration

My AI inclusive approach starts with inspiration—showcasing what AI can do for employees, team members, and leaders. People get excited when they realize AI can assist them in their current role, helping them accomplish things they’ve never been able to do before. However, inspiration takes you only so far. Eventually, people think, “This can make me better, but I don’t want it to do my job instead of me.” That’s where real inclusivity begins—determining how much you want to allow AI into your organization.

Sometimes, leadership needs to move from inspiration to implementation. A friend recently worked with a design team whose owner initially didn’t want to impose AI adoption. After showing how AI could help designers be more productive, the owner’s perspective shifted dramatically. He told his team, “If you don’t adopt AI in the next six months, you may not be here.”

That’s severe, but it reflects reality. If you don’t embrace AI and become more productive because of it, competitors using AI will outpace you.

Building AI into your culture

In my organization, we’ve taken a different approach. We have a decentralized leadership structure, so top-down mandates don’t align with our culture. We’ve set a strategic intent: AI will be in every part of our business this year. We invite those who want to be involved to start immediately.

About half of our CMOs are actively engaged in learning and adopting AI, while the other half are more passive. Many are scared, fearing AI will take their jobs. To them, it feels like being asked to dig your own grave. As a leader, I’ve been transparent. As we grow, we’re not going to add more people. We’re going to add more AI. We don’t look to replace humans with AI. However, we look to scale with AI in ways that require fewer additional humans as we grow.

To address their fears, we launched a six-week boot camp at which teams work together using AI to build things that make their jobs easier. Creativity is the highest level of energy we have as humans. Bringing creativity into the AI conversation gets people excited rather than fearful.

AI as an organizational member

I’ve started viewing AI as a separate role on an org chart. You have your CMO, your director of marketing, your designer, and your AI-er. This AI agent works alongside peers and needs leadership, management, and direction. If AI isn’t properly tuned and trained to match your organization’s core values, it won’t be a cultural fit. One of our core values is “trust the process, value the expertise.” If we have an AI system that nobody trusts because it goes off the rails, it is counter to our core values.

Core values can and should be programmed into any AI initiative. The AI needs to operate within the same constraints you’d expect from any employee. For AI built within your organization, this happens somewhat naturally. Off-the-shelf AI solutions need careful management and training, just as new employees need onboarding.

Right now, there’s not much senior leadership that understands AI well. That’s a big marketplace gap. My organization is building its own AI agency and turning our CMOs into AI experts. There’s nobody better to run organizational AI than a marketer, because marketers touch customers from lead to exit, from support to sales to admin.

The future of AI-inclusive communities

As businesses continue to scale with AI, human communities might actually shrink in some ways, driving them back to more intimate, in-person activities that become more valuable than ever. There’s a growing divide between artificial and real. True human connection can’t be replaced by AI. I envision communities dividing into two sectors. Some will embrace AI and be better because of it. Imagine brainstorming sessions at which AI helps ideas flow faster and bigger. Others will be intentionally AI-absent, preserving spaces for pure human connection.

Looking ahead, AI will likely be smarter than the smartest human within years. That opens up exciting creative possibilities. AI could solve water problems, discover new energy opportunities, tackle challenges that people are not smart enough to figure out today. Yes, it’s scary. However, if AI can do all the hard work nobody wants to do, and humans get to focus on creative, connective, collaborative work—that’s a great utopia.

Moving forward with AI in the workplace

An AI-inclusive work culture means treating it like an organizational member from day one. When you do so, you can incorporate it purposefully. You might not want a fully autonomous agent immediately, but you can choose the right AI-assist tools and ensure someone knowledgeable leads their implementation.

The goal is to let AI handle the hard work nobody wants to do—freeing humans to focus on supporting each other, creating together, and finding purpose in our uniquely human capabilities. Building an AI-inclusive community means reimagining how you work, who you work with, and what’s possible when you embrace rather than exclude your newest team members.

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