Using AI to Fuel Human Connection

When people talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation often focuses on efficiency. What tasks can be automated? How much time can be saved? How can work move faster?

At ABW Partners, we've been thinking about AI a little differently. Many of the non-profit leaders, philanthropists, and organizations that we serve are built on trust, relationships, and shared experiences. Working more efficiently doesn’t necessarily improve our work. That is why we view AI as an opportunity to create more space for the work that increases our impact: building relationships, solving problems, and helping people and organizations grow. 

Technology creates the greatest impact when it helps people work better together. Here are a few ways leaders and teams can put that mindset into practice:

1. Protect presence

Some of the most meaningful moments happen when we're fully engaged in a conversation.

Too often, though, our attention is divided between listening and documenting. AI transcription and note-taking tools, like Granola or Otter, can help ease that burden by capturing key points, organizing next steps, and summarizing discussions.

When leaders spend less time taking notes, they can spend more time listening, asking thoughtful questions, and engaging with the people in front of them.

Use Case: During a recent client workshop, participants generated ideas on Post-it notes and flip charts throughout the session. In the past, at least one facilitator would have been responsible for documenting every idea, pulling their attention away from the conversation and interactivity of the session. Instead, our entire facilitation team stayed fully engaged with participants by being a part of discussions and asking follow-up questions, while we photographed the outputs afterward and used Claude to organize and synthesize the ideas. AI didn't replace the human work of facilitating the discussion; it protected our ability to be present for it.

2. Create more capacity for impact

When we protect presence, we also create more capacity for team members to do more with their time. 

By streamlining repetitive administrative tasks, teams can devote more energy to strategic thinking, relationship-building, and the work that drives meaningful results.

The goal isn't simply to do more work in less time. It's to create capacity for the work that has the greatest impact.

Use Case: This is a practice that occurs daily at ABW Partners. After each client meeting, we redact client names and sensitive information from our notes and plug them into AI to help summarize the key takeaways and action items. This helps build out the agenda for the following meeting.

3. Encourage shared learning

We are all new at AI, and the most successful adoption happens when we learn from each other. 

Creating space for teams to exchange ideas, share successful prompts, discuss concerns, and explore new use cases helps build collective confidence and capability. These conversations foster curiosity and encourage experimentation. 

For organizations committed to pursuing excellence, learning together is often more valuable than simply learning faster.

Use Case: Recently, our team came together for an internal AI training session to explore how emerging tools could support our work and strengthen how we serve our partners. While the topic was technology, the experience itself was deeply collaborative. Team members shared ideas, compared approaches, and discussed the opportunities and challenges of adopting new tools. The session became less about AI and more about learning from one another. Now, a few of our team members meet biweekly to discuss ongoing AI applications in our work, and our full team is constantly exchanging articles and thought leadership on the topic.

4. Unlock creativity

AI has the ability to analyze and organize data and research findings more quickly than any human ever could, but beyond the speed, AI may analyze and organize the data in a way that you never would have thought of. This not only allows us to spend more time brainstorming creative solutions and opportunities, but also prompts us to see different angles and perspectives other than our own and apply the data in unexpected ways.

Beyond the data-inspired creativity AI unlocks, it can also help with the creative brainstorming itself. Generating thought starters, prompts, unexpected use cases, etc. However, it cannot replicate the context that we bring through our vast experience, values, relationships, and judgment. The strongest outcomes happen when technology helps teams get started, and people bring the insight needed to refine, challenge, and improve the work. 

Use Case: Recently, we led a training for nonprofit leaders to strengthen their philanthropic strategies. Based on our decades of experience working with all kinds of donors, we have learned how they think and behave. We shared these insights and data with AI to create archetypes that felt real. Throughout the session, these archetypes helped participants apply what they were learning in a practical way.

Our humanity is alive and well

Technology will continue to evolve, and the tools available a year from now may look very different from those we use today.

What won't change is the importance of people and our individual and collective humanity.

Organizations that thrive will be those that embrace growth, invest in strong relationships, pursue excellence in their work, and find ways to enjoy the process of learning and adapting along the way.

AI can help us work more efficiently and think in new ways. But trust is still built by people. Relationships are still built by people. Meaningful change and impact is still led by people.