The Teams Pulling Ahead Aren’t Using AI the Same Way
Inside a new USC playbook built around institutional memory, workflow redesign, and AI as teammate.
“You need to drive as much organizational transformation as technical transformation.” — Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School professor and researcher focused on AI, innovation, and how organizations adapt to technological change.
Most organizations are still using AI in isolated ways. A few prompts here. A chatbot there. Individual experimentation living inside disconnected workflows.
But some organizations are beginning to approach AI differently. Not as the newest shiny tool. Not as a replacement for people. But as part of a larger operational redesign.
That shift is happening inside SC TEACHER, a USC-based research consortium focused on South Carolina’s educator workforce. Their work involves large-scale survey analysis, teacher retention research, district engagement, statewide data systems, and translating complex findings into action. The challenge is not simply producing more information. It’s helping knowledge move more effectively across teams, workflows, and decision-making systems.
From Scattered Prompts to Shared Systems
The playbook emerging from SC TEACHER’s work focuses less on flashy AI demos and more on organizational capability.
Inside are examples of teams building living research libraries, transforming datasets into first-draft visualizations in minutes, generating audience-specific messaging from the same core findings, and creating workflows where institutional knowledge no longer lives in scattered documents or individual heads.
The most interesting part is not the tools themselves. It’s the shift in thinking underneath them. The organizations pulling ahead are not simply adopting AI faster. They are redesigning how work flows.
What SC TEACHER Is Saying
Building Organizational Fluency
The organizations making meaningful progress with AI are treating it as an operational and leadership challenge, not just a technology purchase. Workflow design, communication systems, institutional memory, and human judgment still matter. In many ways, they matter more now.
Setser Group helps organizations rethink how people, systems, and AI work together through a human-centered approach to strategy, learning, and organizational design. Let’s work together!
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Most organizations are still experimenting with AI one prompt at a time. The organizations pulling ahead are redesigning how knowledge, workflows, and teams operate together.
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