Companies are trying to figure out where GenAI fits. Not the hype version, but the practical one: what changes, what doesn’t, and where the real value shows up in how teams actually work.
We’ve spent nearly two decades at Cascade Insights® studying how companies adopt new technologies. And while that experience is foundational to what we do now, we’ll be the first to say: AI adoption isn’t like past technology shifts. The pace is faster, the tools are less settled, and the impact on how people do their jobs is more direct and more personal. Getting this right matters more than it ever has. And getting it wrong has real consequences for real people.
That’s what drives this work. Not just helping organizations become more productive, but making sure people aren’t run over, limited, or left out by this shift. That’s something we don’t see enough of in the AI training space right now.
AI Training Built on a Foundation of Teaching
Rooted in Teaching. Proven in Practice.
Sean Campbell, Cascade Insights®’ co-founder and CEO, has been passionate about education for as long as he’s been in technology. He’s taught at Purdue University, Willamette University’s MBA program, and currently at George Fox University’s College of Business, where he teaches GenAI for Business and GenAI Consulting. He’s also helping shape the faculty mentoring and curriculum work that is building AI integration across the undergraduate business program, driven by a belief that the next generation of business leaders needs to understand these tools before they hit the workforce, not after.
That teaching background is central to how we approach AI training at Cascade Insights®. It’s not a side credential. It’s core to the method.
At Cascade Insights®, the research and advisory firm Sean co-founded in 2006, the work has always sat at the intersection of business strategy, technology adoption, and training. From training technical teams early in his career, to helping shape the roadmap of leading technology solutions through research, to educating leaders at Fortune 500 companies on business strategy and tech adoption. Over the past several years, that focus has sharpened around AI, both at Cascade Insights® where teams use it to transform how research and advisory work gets done, and in the classroom where every semester brings new insights about how people learn to work with these tools, what trips them up, and what actually sticks.
The training material we deliver isn’t built from blog posts and vendor demos. It’s grounded in how the AI landscape is actually changing (informed by our ongoing research), how organizations are really adopting AI (informed by the hundreds of interviews we conduct every year), and what works when you’re sitting across from someone who needs to make this practical for their job. That combination of research, teaching, and hands-on advisory work is what makes our approach different.
Sean has also authored technology books published by Microsoft Press and Intel Press, delivered over 150 conference sessions and workshops, and appeared on more than 100 podcasts covering technology, business strategy, and market research.
The Gap Most AI Training Misses
We Work Inside Your Workflows
We don’t teach from slides. We sit with your marketing team and rebuild how they develop content. We work alongside your operations lead to redesign a reporting process. We help your HR director figure out which parts of their recruiting workflowAI can genuinely improve, and which parts it can’t. Every engagement is grounded in your real deliverables, your real tools, and your real constraints.
We Meet People Where They Are
Some of your people are already experimenting. Others are skeptical. A few may be quietly intimidated. Decades of teaching and mentoring, at large enterprises, at universities, in one-on one coaching sessions, have made one thing clear: sustainable adoption starts with meeting each person at their actual skill level. No one gets left behind. No one gets bored.
We Help You Understand What Changes and What Doesn’t
Not every task should be handed to AI. We use frameworks like RISE (Routine, Interpretation, Strategy, Engagement) to help your teams understand which work AI should absorb, where human effort needs to shift, and where human judgment remains essential. This clarity is what separates productive AI adoption from the kind that creates confusion and resentment.
We Know the Tools. All of Them.
From conversational AI to generative platforms to agentic systems, we evaluate what’s emerging, what’s mature, and what’s overhyped. We help you focus on the tools that solve real problems for your specific teams, avoid redundant subscriptions, and build a streamlined AI stack that accelerates performance instead of complicating it.
We Build Lasting Fluency, Not One-Day Excitement
A workshop creates a spark. Mentoring creates capability. Our engagements are designed to build over time, so your people don’t just learn what AI can do. They develop the judgment to know when to use it, when not to, and how to get consistently better results.
How We Work: Flexible Models Based on Your Needs and Pace
We deliver support in a range of formats, from a single virtual session to an extended engagement that unfolds over weeks or months. Most clients combine formats based on where their teams are and how fast they need to move.
Targeted Mentoring
This is the core of what we do. Ongoing, one-on-one or small-group mentoring tied to real projects and active workflows. We start with an assessment of where your team is and build toward measurable fluency milestones.
What this looks like in practice: Early on, we assess your team’s current AI usage, identify the highest-impact workflows, and establish baseline capabilities. From there, we start rebuilding specific processes together: a content production pipeline, a research synthesis workflow, a financial reporting cadence. Over time, your people move from guided practice to working independently with AI at a level that would have seemed unreachable at the start.
High-Impact Workshops
Focused sessions, virtual or in-person, ranging from one hour to a full day. These are designed to align stakeholders, introduce capabilities, and create shared understanding across teams. They work well when leadership needs everyone on the same page before a broader initiative begins.
Executive Coaching
One-on-one support for senior leaders who need to build their own AI fluency and confidence before they can credibly lead the transformation. This is more common than most organizations admit, and there’s no shame in it. The landscape is moving fast, and we help leaders get ahead of it privately and efficiently.
Immersive Bootcamps
Multi-day programs that combine education, hands-on practice, and workflow redesign. Best suited for organizations that need to build broad capability quickly: a new team forming around AI, a department-wide initiative, or a company preparing for a major operational shift.
What Changes After Working Together
Before
Scattered experiments. A few power users. Most of the team unsure where to start. Leadership can’t tell what’s working.
After
Teams that know which AI tools to use for which tasks. Workflows that are measurably faster without sacrificing quality. Leaders who can evaluate AI initiatives with confidence. And an organization where AI fluency compounds over time, because it’s built into how people actually work, not bolted on as an afterthought.
Who This Is For
We work with companies of all sizes, because the need to get AI adoption right isn’t limited by headcount.
Enterprises and large organizations with complex, cross-functional teams where AI adoption needs coordination across departments, governance structures, and multiple layers of leadership.
Mid-market companies that are growing fast and want to embed AI into their operations before inefficiencies calcify, but don’t have a dedicated AI team to lead the way.
Small companies and teams where every person wears multiple hats and the right AI tools can have an outsized impact on capacity, speed, and the quality of what a lean team can deliver.
Within those organizations, we work most often with functional leaders (VPs and directors of marketing, operations, HR, finance, and product), senior executives (CEOs, COOs, and division heads), and cross-functional teams that need to develop shared AI capabilities.
Our Approach: Fluid Intelligence®
AI’s potential is immense, but real results come from knowing how to work with AI fluidly, not
just knowing how to prompt it.
Our Fluid Intelligence® methodology helps teams direct AI with purpose, combining human judgment and AI acceleration to achieve lasting impact. We help your people guide AI tools toward the right problems, delegate the right tasks while maintaining oversight, know when human judgment should override an AI output, and design workflows where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly.
This isn’t about replacing expertise. It’s about amplifying it.
Master the Art of AI Collaboration
Most teams treat AI like a search engine, and get generic results. This guide previews the exact frameworks we teach in our mentoring sessions.
Download the practical guide to learn:
- How to Delegate to AI: Use the 5-element framework to manage AI like you would a capable colleague.
- Context Engineering: Master techniques to ensure AI speaks in your specific brand voice and understands your unique audience.
- Reasoning Models: Learn when and how to use “heavy thinking” models for complex, high-stakes strategic work.
Get the Guide