Context
Two failure modes dominate corporate AI training. The first is the capability tour: forty slides of what the technology can do, after which nobody’s Monday is different. The second is the tool demo, which teaches one product that will look dated within a year.
Leaders in Malaysia and the wider region were being sold both, and were arriving sceptical because they had already sat through one.
What I did
- Built the programme around the participant’s own work. People bring a real task from their job and leave having done it with AI in the room, which is the only version of this training that survives contact with a normal week.
- Taught judgement, not tools: where these systems are reliable, where they are confidently wrong, what must never leave the organisation, and how to check output you are accountable for.
- Made the programmes HRD Corp claimable (TTT/22718), so Malaysian employers can fund them properly instead of squeezing them into a lunch hour.
- Ran it across audiences — corporates, government agencies, MSMEs and universities — and adjusted the examples rather than the principles.
- Kept advising after the training, because the questions that decide whether AI adoption sticks arrive three months later, not on the day.
Outcome
Nine programmes delivered since 2018 — from AI for Leaders & Executives and Machine Learning Spark through Practical Learning with ChatGPT to Build Your First 24/7 Personal AI Agent — to organisations including Touch ‘n Go, PLUS Malaysia, TERAS Teknologi, Hiredly, Green Packet, Asian Pac Holdings Berhad, Nawawi Tie and SIS Integrated. Alongside it, ongoing advisory work on digital transformation and technology growth, including a seat on the AI Advisory Committee of Malaysia’s National AI Office (NAIO).
What I’d do differently
I would build the follow-up in from the start rather than offering it. A one-day session changes what people believe; only the next month changes what they do. The organisations that got the most out of this were the ones that came back with real problems, and I now think that second conversation should be part of the programme, not an option in it.