297: Most Companies Are Using AI Wrong And It's Costing Them | Christa Hill

Release Date: 

May 19, 2026

Release Date: May 19

What if your AI strategy is making your team faster, but not actually smarter?

In this episode of The Learn-It-All™ Podcast, Damon sits down with Christa Hill, Co-Founder of Tacit Edge and Learnit’s very own Chief AI Learning Officer, to unpack why so many leaders, teams, and organizations are still using artificial intelligence at what Christa calls “brochure-level.” Playing around with ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, or Gemini might feel like progress, but Christa says real AI literacy starts when you stop treating AI like a shortcut and start using it to rethink strategy, decision-making, team workflows, and business value.

Christa explains why most people are still operating at a grade three or grade four level of AI literacy, why productivity wins eventually cap out, and why leaders cannot keep approving AI tools or projects they do not understand. She also breaks down one of the biggest mistakes companies are making right now: banning AI use and accidentally pushing employees into unregulated, risky “shadow AI” behavior. As Christa puts it, organizations do not really have AI problems. They have very human problems surrounding the technology.

Damon and Christa also dig into what the future of work actually looks like when every employee is augmented by AI. From “greenhouse meetings” that unlock better ideas to using transcripts and AI tools to spot trends across team conversations, Christa shares practical ways to build real AI capability without losing the human advantage. Because AI may have more IQ points than us, but it does not have our judgment, empathy, lived experience, or what Christa calls “your proprietary data set.”

What You’ll Learn:

  • What Christa means by “brochure-level” AI use, and why surface-level productivity hacks are not enough for real AI transformation
  • Why Christa calls ChatGPT “Captain Confidence,” and why leaders need to read, edit, and add the final 30% that makes AI-generated work actually sound like them
  • How to avoid wasting money on AI adoption by solving one or two business problems first, instead of trying to make one tool fix everything
  • Why productivity wins cap out if they are not connected to team goals, business strategy, and collective value
  • Why companies should stop running every day like “Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals” and give people room to think about the future of their work
  • Why recording meetings, using transcripts, and feeding team conversations into AI tools can help spot trends, risks, and new business opportunities
  • Why banning AI tools may be one of the riskiest moves a company can make, especially in regulated industries with confidential information
  • What Christa says is the true human advantage: your proprietary data set, your lived experience, your judgment, your empathy, your context, and your gifts

In This Episode:

  • 00:00 - Episode preview and introduction
  • 01:22 - Why Copilot doesn’t make you AI literate
  • 03:03 - The mistake self-taught AI users keep making
  • 08:16 - The “Captain Confidence” problem with ChatGPT
  • 10:30 - Why most people are still at a grade three AI level
  • 14:12 - Productivity wins are not an AI strategy
  • 16:52 - How one team bought back time with AI literacy
  • 19:09 - Why your team needs “game one days”
  • 23:15 - Why AI literacy makes people less afraid of being replaced
  • 24:25 - Technical debt explained for non-technical leaders
  • 27:01 - Why every meeting should become usable data
  • 28:52 - The “yes, and” exercise that kills bad brainstorming
  • 31:45 - Why people don’t have their best ideas on command
  • 33:41 - How leaders can capture ideas before they disappear
  • 38:21 - AI is a mirror, so what is it exposing?
  • 39:37 - Why Christa doesn’t buy the AI replacement panic
  • 42:18 - The question every leader should ask AI but probably won’t
  • 45:13 - Why banning AI might be your riskiest move
  • 54:09 - The executive AI questions leaders are afraid to ask
  • 57:18 - Smash or pass: the AI tools Christa actually recommends
  • 01:01:41 - The human advantage AI can’t copy
  • 01:03:21 - How to know when you need real AI education

About Christa Hill:

Christa Hill is the Co-Founder of Tacit Edge and Chief AI Learning Officer at Learnit, where she helps leaders, executives, and teams build practical AI literacy and develop a smarter approach to technology, people, workflows, and business strategy. With more than 20 years of experience in technology, product management, and business transformation, Christa teaches organizations how to move beyond basic AI tools training and start using artificial intelligence to solve real business problems. Her work focuses on helping people become builders, not just users, so they can understand AI’s limits, create stronger guardrails, reduce risk, and amplify the human skills that still matter most in the future of work.

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