AI can help people work faster, but real innovation still depends on curiosity, judgment, and human perspective.
I am an overthinker. I always have been. Before AI, writing a simple email reply could take me forever. I'd draft it, second-guess it, rewrite it, wonder if the tone was right, and eventually send something I still wasn't sure about.
I had never worked in an office before Zweig Group. Selling lotion doesn't take professional communication skills. Working with kids takes oversimplification and repetition. Neither prepared me for professional emails. So when I got here, I felt pressured to sound like I belonged. Every email felt like a question I didn't know the answer to. Do I use the formal rules from English class, or do I stay more laid back?
I overthought it. Every time.
How AI can improve communication without replacing it
AI did change that. I could draft something, hand it to AI, and watch it come back cleaner and warmer than what I'd written. So, I studied it. Why did that word work better? Why did that sentence read differently? Slowly, without realizing it, I was learning how to communicate in a world I hadn't grown up in.
Then, I'll admit, I started making the mistake of letting AI do too much of my talking for me. It was easy to lean on it, knowing it was communicating a little better than me. But if AI is writing your words, you are not practicing how to communicate. I noticed my social skills rusting.
I caught it and course corrected. But it was a real thing that happened, and I don't think people talk about it enough.
Here's something you should know about me: I have a diverse skill set. I was installing software before kindergarten, built a computer with my dad in elementary school, and was hacking systems in high school. I also have a music degree and an eye for design. I chose psychology as my first college major because I wanted to understand how people think. I'm good at math, which is why coding and logical thinking come naturally. Every single one of these things matters, and you probably have a list like this too.
Most jobs only have room for one or two of those things at a time. The rest go dormant, because you're spending all of your time on what your job decides you should be practicing.
I found Zweig Group accidentally. A friend, a foreign exchange journalism student from England, had gotten an internship with Zweig Group, and when she had to move back to the U.K., Zweig Group asked if she recommended anyone. She recommended me.
I was pursuing a full-time degree while working almost full-time. I was burning out. One night I found out about a six-month IT certification program at my university, quit the degree, did the program, and felt like I was finally doing what I was supposed to be doing. After I got my certification, I was promoted to marketing coordinator.
On the marketing team, I started automating things just because I wanted to. No AI, just curiosity and a stubborn need to make things work better. I figured out how to pull snippets from our website's RSS feed into our weekly emails. They're still being used today. I built an ad management system so nobody needed a spreadsheet for updates. I don't like having to look through Excel spreadsheets. But they make a great foundation for automation.
I was also burning out on graphic design. I have an eye for aesthetics, but I'm a perfectionist. That makes me pretty slow. I was always the last kid to finish my art projects. When the work has restrictions, when it's for a brand and not for me, that perfectionism gets louder. It was taking everything out of me.
Zweig Group noticed both things: That I was automating on my own time, and that design was draining me. So they opened a door that fit me better, and I am so grateful for that. Coding and automation became officially mine.
Why human judgment still matters in automation and design
That's when I met AI in a new way. I was building web pages way faster. But AI knows industry standard, not your brand. You can show it screenshots, explain the rules, walk it through exactly what you need, and it will still drift from what you were going for. The same was true for design. Nine times out of 10 I'd end up asking for change after change because it was guessing at me. It doesn't have my eye. And even with automation flows, I kept choosing routes it never suggested because I understood something it didn't. How real people would actually use the system. What would break downstream. What mattered more than technical correctness.
AI can be technically correct and completely wrong at the same time. Correcting it required me to know my subject precisely. That precision only exists because I never stopped thinking for myself. The moment you hand that over, something essential is lost.
My manager told me something recently that stuck with me. His manager once told him that his automation work would eventually mean a four day work week for the company. And then he actually did that. So his manager joked about a four hour work week. The goal isn't to do less. It's to keep innovating. To use the freedom to bring more ideas to life.
That's the vision I'm working toward. And it only works if the skills that got me here stay sharp. AI creates breathing room. But only if you stay in the driver's seat.
How to keep your skills sharp while working with AI
Here's what I wish someone had told me at the beginning: Most of us have more range than our jobs have room for. The coder who is also an artist. The systems thinker who is also a communicator. The analyst who also has an ear for what sounds right. AI can give you the time and room to grow these skills, but it can also stunt your growth if you let it. Letting something else do your thinking puts you on that path. Letting something think with you puts you on the other.
I came to Zweig Group not knowing how to send a work email. Now I touch every part of the company – operations, consulting, field marketing, research, technology.
All of that was already in me.
I just had to learn where to let AI in, and where to use my own valuable, human judgment.
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Bree Sikes is a business systems analyst at Zweig Group. Connect with her on LinkedIn. |