[AI SPRINT] How to Use AI Without Losing Your Edge

I hope you're enjoying your summer! After a brief pause due to national speaking events and a bit of vacation, I’m back and ready to resume the regular cadence of the AI SPRINT newsletter. Some quick highlights before the main content:

A Quick Win:

Yesterday I met with a small manufacturing client who recently completed my AI Jumpstart program—designed to launch AI in a company in just 30 days. During the debrief, the CEO shared that ChatGPT not only brought clear operational benefits but also sparked a bold new product initiative they wouldn’t have previously pursued. Since my mission is helping businesses create growth with AI, stories like this are exactly why I do what I do. I can’t wait to see their launch!

CEO Alert:

Another client recently sent me a stat that stopped me in my tracks: 79% of CEOs fear for their jobs if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business outcomes within two years. The danger? Many CEOs are still treating AI like just another tech initiative—handing it off to IT. But AI is the biggest business transformation in decades and needs to be led from the top. That’s why the first step of the AI SPRINT is always SPARK Action with Leadership. Without C-level ownership, your AI efforts won’t stick.

ChatGPT Teams/Enterprise Flexible Pricing:

OpenAI just rolled out flexible pricing for ChatGPT Teams and Enterprise. Companies can now buy usage credits so employees don’t hit limits mid-project. Alongside this, users get access to the powerful o3-Pro Reasoning model—previously exclusive to ChatGPT Pro. More features like Operator are likely coming soon, and rumors suggest bigger announcements, possibly even GPT-5, are on the way. Now’s the time to set clear internal standards: define how credits are purchased, who approves them, and how usage is monitored. Get ahead of it before things get messy.

I’m Hiring!

I’m growing my team to meet demand as we expand our services later this summer—including a new AI SPRINT leadership cohort and large-group AI SPRINT seminars. I’m currently hiring AI Advisors and a Community Manager to help deliver this next chapter. If you're interested—or know someone who might be—please reach out!

Now onto this week’s episode: How to use AI without losing your edge!

AI is speeding up everything—emails, reports, strategy decks. But here’s the gut punch: overusing AI might be making you and your team worse at thinking. And that can kill your company.

Two brand-new studies back it up:

• The Wharton Essay Study: Students who used AI to help write essays became dependent on it and showed worse performance when asked to write without AI. Their critical thinking took a hit. [Wharton Study - SSRN]

• The MIT Essay Study: Although MIT found similarly that writing only with AI created a cognitive impact, professionals who actively engaged in reviewing and editing AI-generated essays demonstrated stronger cognitive engagement and produced higher-quality essays, along with higher ownership and recall. [MIT Study - arXiv]

These studies are early warning signs. If your team is over-delegating to AI, you’re not just speeding up tasks—you’re risking a slow erosion of the very skills that make your business thrive: judgment, creativity, originality.

This week, I’m sharing my draft PACE Framework for helping everyone understand how to leverage AI in a way that provides both results and an increase in human capability, not less.

It might seem dry, but applying this framework could be one of the most valuable things you do today!

There are two parts to the framework:

1. Choosing if the task should be AI- or Human-led

2. For Human-led tasks, Following the PACE method to use AI in a way that creates more skill and value, not less.

First, Decide: Should This Task Be AI-Led or Human-Led?

AI can help on almost every business task, so the important first step is to ask this clear question:
Will human judgment make the outcome better—or make me better?

That’s your north star, and the question you need employees to start thinking about.

If a task is routine, low-stakes, and doesn’t teach or challenge anyone, it can be AI-led.

But if a task can be improved by human capability or strengthens human skills, it should be Human-Led.

AI-Led Tasks
AI is ideal for repetitive, predictable work where speed matters more than insight. You’re plugging in inputs and getting clean outputs—no creative thinking, no human nuance.

Typical AI-led tasks include:

• Scheduling meetings

• Pulling reports

• Responding to FAQs (like chatbots)

• Transcribing calls

These are tasks to automate confidently—to free your people up for better things.

Human-Led Tasks
This is where your team’s judgment, creativity, and experience matter—and where handing the wheel to AI starts to backfire.

Human-led tasks drive business forward and build human strengths like:

• Learning: Digging into trends, analyzing competitors, and growing new capabilities

• Creating Value: Improving a process, designing a campaign, or shaping strategy

• Creative or Complex Thinking: Writing, problem-solving, designing, storytelling

• Ethics, Safety, or Risk: Hiring, policy decisions, customer disputes, safety reviews

This is where brain rot happens when AI is overused.
When people hand off essays, pitches, or strategy docs to AI, skills erode. The work gets bland. And your edge as a business can begin to fade.

These tasks need humans in charge—with AI as the sidekick, not the owner. This is what you need to train employees on: using AI isn’t an excuse to stop thinking.

Introducing the PACE Method

Once a task is identified as Human-Led, you get the best results if you run it through PACE—a four-step model that keeps AI in the passenger seat and your team fully engaged.

Here’s how it works:

Plan and Outline Your Goal
Before touching AI, get clear on your goal, then use AI to map out the high-level steps to achieve it. This might be as simple as a specific direction—like “analyze market trends” to the more advanced “help plan a marketing campaign”.
Example: A marketing team might say, “We want to boost engagement by 20%. Help me plan the steps to accomplish it.”

Ask for Ideas and New Views
Once you’ve set the goal and plan, use AI (and teammates, if collaborating) to spark fresh ideas or explore different angles. In this step, you ask for AI help to improve both your and the AI’s work.

Examples:

• “Give me five alternative ways to approach this”

• “Evaluate this from the CEO’s point of view”

• “Play devil’s advocate—why might this not work?”

Then humans pick the best ideas and iterate from there.

This step is now getting skipped constantly.

Most people take the first draft AI spits out and move on. That’s a mistake because this is where the quality and cognitive increase happens—when AI and human judgment actually interact. You need to critically evaluate what AI suggested, and then improve it with your unique human judgement.

Create the Work
In this step, you build the real output—writing, designing, or deciding. AI can help with drafts or raw inputs (e.g., an ad draft or data summary), but humans lead the structure, tone, subject, and strategy to make sure it hits all goals.

In my own work, I usually write the first draft or outline by hand—then I optimize with AI. That’s the muscle you want your employees to build in this step!

Evaluate and Refine Your Work
Now you tune the work to make sure it hits the right results. Check that the work is sharp, aligned to the goal, and represents your team’s standards—not just AI’s.

This is where you look for errors, bias, brand consistency, logic gaps, and more. It’s where you leverage your unique human experience, knowledge, responsibilities, and goals.

Remember: AI never gets the final say on Human-Led work. Humans are the quality control.

How to Train on PACE

Teach your team to use PACE for every Human-Led task. It’s a fast, repeatable method that keeps their thinking sharp and their output high-quality.

PACE teaches them to:

• Lead the work, not follow the tech

• Use AI for leverage, not shortcuts

• Avoid passive copy-paste thinking

• Create work they’re proud to sign their name to (and that counts at performance review)

Here’s a slide you can share with your team to make this easy:

Business Examples Using PACE

Here are some examples of how you might use this in a few business work tasks:

Marketing Campaign (Mid-Size B2C Brand)

• Plan a social campaign to boost summer engagement by 20%

• Ask AI for fresh theme ideas based on Gen Z trends

• Create the content with AI-drafts and human edits

• Evaluate and refine for tone, brand alignment, and inclusive language

HR Process (Tech Company)

• Plan a new candidate review system to reduce bias

• Ask AI for risk points in the old process

• Create interview questions and rubrics with clear standards

• Evaluate and refine the final process with legal and DEI teams

Product Strategy (Consumer Goods Brand)

• Plan a roadmap to launch a sustainable packaging line this fall

• Ask AI for trends in eco-friendly materials and competitor moves

• Create prototype concepts, supplier briefs, and marketing hooks

• Evaluate and refine cost, supply chain risks, and alignment with brand values

Stay Sharp. Stay Human. Stay Ahead.

AI is a power tool. But your team’s creativity, judgment, and human spark are what actually move the business forward.

The PACE Method keeps your people in the lead—using AI where it helps, without losing what makes them great.

Use AI wisely.
Keep your edge.
Train your team to think better—not just faster.

Want to train your team on PACE?
I can help—just reply here and let’s get started.

About Trent: Trent Gillespie is an AI Keynote Speaker, CEO of Stellis AI, former Amazon leader, and advisor on building AI-Native, AI-Enabled businesses. Book Trent to speak to your group or book a call to discuss using AI within your business.

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