Why Agile Teams Are Winning the Race to Create AI-Ready Cultures
The following article is from Inc.com, one of the most prestigious SMB magazines in the United States covering HR, marketing, leadership, IT, and more. In this article, they interviewed Andrea Fryrear, a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) in Colorado, author, and co-founder of Agile Sherpas, which helps leaders modernize their marketing teams to work smarter, move faster, and achieve better results with agile frameworks.
The missing ingredient in your AI implementation strategy could be a mindset shift.
We asked Fryrear how business leaders can create AI-ready cultures.
For business leaders, AI can have a huge impact on how their organization operates.
In most cases, the challenge they face is creating AI-ready cultures.
Getting your staff to adopt a technology as fast-moving and revolutionary as AI isn’t easy.
Conservative cultures resist change, people may feel AI threatens their roles, and even when people are convinced to try the technology, they may relapse.
However, a recent report analyzing 430 marketing professionals revealed that a particular group of professionals was adopting AI much faster than their peers.
It also shows clear steps business leaders can take to get more departments to adopt AI and reap its benefits.
Who’s really adopting AI?
In our survey of 430 marketing professionals to find out who had fully implemented AI, a clear pattern emerged.
Fully agile marketers (those who embrace the agile mindset and use frameworks like Scrum or Kanban) were three times more likely to have fully integrated AI into their work, compared to somewhat agile marketers (36% vs. 11%).
What about marketers who don’t follow an agile methodology?
None had fully integrated AI.
The data clearly shows that agile working methodologies dramatically increase the likelihood that marketers will fully integrate AI and be successful overall.
So, what aspects of agile methodology drive these stark differences?
Understanding Agility
Agile methodology can best be understood as a reaction to old ways of working.
Instead of spending weeks formulating detailed plans that the team will follow for months (only to achieve a result that is no longer relevant to the client), agile methodology is based on breaking work down into smaller chunks.
It allows teams to test, iterate, and gather feedback.
They can also constantly evolve their work as it is done to ensure goals are achieved.
In practice, this means working flexibly, eliminating silos for more open collaboration, rigorously prioritizing work, and limiting work in progress.
It also generally means delivering work faster so you can get feedback and integrate that knowledge into the next iteration.
There are many ways to be agile.
However, what connects them is an agile mindset based on the principles of the original agile manifesto.
Stepping back a bit, consider what this data means.
It indicates some key, data-driven ways business leaders can build AI-ready cultures:
- Support Instead of Mandates
A common mistake leaders make when encouraging AI adoption is simply telling teams to start using it.
While permission is the first step, a mandate isn’t enough.
In fact, 73% of fully agile teams reported that their leaders consider agility essential for success.
As a firm with expertise in agile marketing, we consistently see that teams need strong support from leaders to fully transition to agile methods.
Servant leadership is crucial in this case.
You must actively support your team in their transition to AI.
This means providing training and coaching, and helping with key hurdles like regulatory compliance.
Communicate clearly what long-term AI integration will entail.
It’s not enough to dismiss your team members’ fears. They need reassurance about what their work will be like in an AI-driven future.
- Autonomy and Experimentation
What applies to virtually all business tools also applies to AI.
You won’t gain a competitive advantage by using the same tools and techniques as everyone else.
For AI to reach its full potential, your team needs time, space, and resources to experiment.
Your team’s autonomy and ability to focus on a small number of high-value activities are directly related to AI success.
With the growing number of AI tools, your team needs the freedom to experiment and discover what works. Imposing a specific AI tool or method deprives them of this essential process.
Experimentation Will Be Continuous
With the breakneck pace of technological advancements, to create AI-ready cultures, your team will need to experiment to stay competitive.
This requires building a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement. It goes beyond simply asking your team to try a new tool.
- Focus
On average, more than six new AI tools are released per day in the marketing sector alone.
Your team could easily become overwhelmed by decision fatigue.
Developing the habit of rigorously prioritizing work so your team can focus on the tasks that truly matter can be a huge help.
Instead of postponing AI testing because of the sheer number of available options, decisions are made, tests are conducted, and the results are used to improve team performance.
- Mindset Over Practices
While it’s tempting to simply adopt agile practices, such as dividing work into sprints, the true value of agility lies in the agile mindset.
When teams without an agile mindset try to be agile, they tend to fall back into old habits, which undermines the entire endeavor and leads to a lot of frustration.
Implementing AI, like almost everything in business, depends on hundreds of small decisions that people make daily.
If your team members don’t have an agile mindset, those decisions will distance the team from agile ways of working and inhibit AI-ready cultures.
So, what is an agile mindset?
It’s an approach to work that encompasses flexibility, continuous improvement, experimentation, customer focus, and prioritization.
The bottom line isn’t to think, «To successfully implement AI, we need to work in sprints and use a Kanban board.»
Instead, you need to invest in training and capacity building to change the way your team members think about their work. The practices may come later, but the foundation must be there from the start.
The Agility Factor
What unites all of these factors is the agile mindset and ways of working.
Agile teams are built on prioritization, experimentation, and autonomy.
It’s no surprise that these cultures excel at implementing AI.
They’re ready to dive right in and start using tools, learn valuable lessons, and iterate until they succeed.
Whether you want to focus on building an agile culture or simply implement a few of its core components, the data shows that agility is vital for leaders looking to create the right conditions for AI implementation.
AI Culture: The Missing Ingredient in Your AI Business Strategy
The following contribution is from the Medium portal and the author is Nicky Verd, a digital futurist who connects people with technology.
Companies invest millions in AI tools, but they forget the one thing that really makes it all work: people.
You can’t build an AI-driven business on a fear-based, rigid, or outdated culture.
Most companies don’t fail at AI or digital transformation because of bad technology.
They fail because of a mindset stuck in the past.
They buy the tools, hire the consultants, and implement the dashboards, but beneath the surface, the real problem remains: a culture that isn’t ready to think, lead, and operate in an AI-driven world.
We love to talk about AI strategy.
But strategy without culture is just a wish list. AI business transformation is a mirror that reflects and amplifies the culture that already exists.
While executives obsess over the latest AI trends, they often ignore the underlying problem: fear of change, outdated mindsets, rigid hierarchies, and a workforce too intimidated or uninformed to experiment with AI.
This is like trying to drive a 21st-century revolution with 20th-century thinking.
Technological Upgrade vs. Mindset Shift
A business AI strategy shouldn’t just be about technological upgrades, but also about a mindset shift.
AI transformation requires curiosity, cross-functional collaboration, and leadership that knows how to manage disruption and uncertainty.
If your workplace is built on fear, control, or bureaucracy, AI will multiply the dysfunction.
But if your culture is built on curiosity, adaptability, and collaboration, AI will become rocket fuel.
In this article, I want to explain why AI culture is the missing ingredient in most business strategies and what it takes to create a culture where humans and machines not only coexist, but co-create.
It’s not about algorithms. It’s about humans.
It’s about the lack of human context in the AI debate and why the world’s most powerful technology can’t save a company whose culture is stuck in the past.
What is AI culture, really?
AI culture isn’t a technological initiative.
It’s a mindset shift that redefines how people think, work, and lead in the age of intelligent machines.
It’s not about implementing new tools, but about redefining old habits.
It’s easy to invest in technology, but it’s much harder to unlearn outdated mindsets.
Without that mental transformation, even the best AI tools won’t have a lasting impact.
AI culture is the shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape how people in your organization interact with AI and each other in an AI-enhanced world.
While digital culture focused on adopting tools and processes for the internet age, AI culture focuses on coexistence, collaboration, and co-creation with intelligent machines.
Culture is your organization’s operating system
AI is just an application. If the operating system is outdated, even the best applications will fail.
It’s less about installing the right software and more about installing a new way of thinking, one that:
– Prioritizes experimentation over perfection,
– Prioritizes learning over knowledge,
– Encourages ethical reflection over mechanical efficiency.
AI culture involves creating a space where humans not only use it, but partner with it.
In this type of culture, failure is feedback, learning is constant, and adaptability is rewarded.
That is the true foundation of AI success: not the code, but the courage. Not the infrastructure, but the intention.
Why most AI strategies fail without a culture of adaptation
You can’t outsource culture. Many organizations invest millions in AI tools and platforms, but forget to ask themselves: Does our culture support this transformation?
Common signs of cultural unpreparedness:
– Employees afraid to experiment or express themselves
– Leaders unsure of how to lead with AI
– Siloed departments hoarding information
– Lack of trust in data or leadership decisions
– Disengaged talent or anxious about being replaced
In these environments, AI adoption not only stalls, it backfires. People resist. Misinformation spreads.
Innovation quietly fades into the background, and ROI is a very expensive metric that no one uses.
AI requires an adaptive, not a rigid, culture.
The cultural ingredients that underpin AI success
For AI to work, organizations must foster a culture that acts as fertile ground for AI transformation.
This means embracing:
Curiosity over certainty
People must feel safe to ask, «What if…» rather than clinging to, «This is how we’ve always done it.»
Continuous Learning
In an AI world, learning isn’t a one-time training. It’s a lifestyle. Curiosity must be ingrained in the DNA of your culture.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
AI affects every function: marketing, HR, operations, finance, etc. Siloed thinking slows down AI transformation. Collaborative thinking accelerates it.
Psychological Safety
If people feel punished for experimenting, they’ll avoid AI altogether. Culture must make failure safe and learning visible.
Agile Leadership
Leaders can’t operate from a position of control. They must lead with questions, not just answers. They must exemplify what it means to be adaptable, vulnerable, and visionary.
Human-Centered Values
Efficiency must never trump ethics. AI culture must keep humanity at the center of decision-making.
AI will amplify any culture you already have.
This is the part most organizations overlook: AI won’t fix a broken culture. Scale.
If your company’s culture is toxic, AI will make it faster, colder, and more chaotic.
Think of AI as a cultural amplifier
It doesn’t just follow instructions, but patterns.
If the dominant pattern in your organization is silos, fear of failure, or resistance to change, AI will simply help you move faster… in the wrong direction.
On the other hand, if your culture empowers people to think critically, collaborate freely, and adapt with agility, AI will fuel that momentum.
Therefore, before investing in more AI tools, invest in a culture that knows what to do with them.
AI will amplify any culture you already have, as it reflects the values, behaviors, and mindsets of those who use it.
Technology doesn’t change culture; it exposes and accelerates it.
From Cultural Lag to Cultural Fit
Many companies are experiencing what sociologists call «cultural lag,» where technology evolves faster than the people, mindsets, leadership, and systems designed to support it.
Organizations adopt powerful AI tools, but they still operate with outdated leadership styles, rigid processes, and fear-based thinking.
The result is often friction, confusion, and resistance.
Moving from culture mismatch to culture fit involves aligning internal culture with the pace and demands of AI.
It’s about creating a workplace where innovation is fostered, learning is continuous, and people feel empowered, not threatened by intelligent machines.
Advanced Tools with an Outdated Mindset
Culture mismatch refers to adopting advanced tools with outdated attitudes and building digital infrastructure with analog mindsets.
It’s time to change the script. Culture mismatch creates friction. Culture fit creates fluidity.
Culture fit in the age of AI isn’t about hiring the right people, but about cultivating the right conditions.
It takes more than just AI talent. You need AI-savvy teams within cultures that are emotionally and strategically prepared to evolve again and again.
Before you invest in more AI, invest in culture.
So here’s the real question for every business leader reading this: Is your company’s culture ready for the age of intelligent machines?
If your people aren’t ready, neither is your AI strategy. Not just being ready to use AI, but also to think with it, learn from it, question it, and evolve with it.
This is the aspect many leaders overlook: AI adoption is not just a technical implementation, but a cultural transformation.
You can’t expect exponential results with a linear mindset. You can’t expect innovation in a culture that clings to tradition.
And, of course, you can’t expect teams to embrace AI if they’re still operating in survival mode… afraid of making mistakes, losing relevance, or being replaced.
Investing in culture means:
– Equippin
