Bringing AI into Organisations the Human Way
Sep 14, 2026
Elvira Kalmár and Zsofia Kishonti
Introduction by Klaus Schenck
Actually, I am an AI dyslexic. AND I enjoyed watching this video about (among other aspects) AI. Let me explain.
What I loved about the approach introduced here by Elvira and Zsófia was the elegant mix of SF (Solution Focus) with ODD (Organisational Development and Design) and people participation in teams to introduce AI (Artificial Intelligence) into a global engineering company (ABB).
Elvira and Zsófia insisted that introducing new tools like AI requires an “evolutionary” (rather than a top-down) approach, building on what works already in existing AI-islands, and utilizing both mentoring and participation in teams to support absorption of the tool teachings. They requested that all participants join voluntarily, bring their own projects to work on real-life issues, and find their own team to ripple-out their learnings.
The interweaving of all these components into a coherent process enabled speeding up both the change itself, and its acceptance by those having to live with it. The core of the project was a six-week “design sprint”, with weekly 4-hour sessions of knowledge inputs and joint reflections in teams with an SF attitude.
- SF contributed co-creating direction of the project towards a joint “future perfect”.
- ODD instructed the special architecture of this change process.
- Participation allowed to harvest the collective wisdom and help everybody being heard and feeling validated, and working on own relevant projects right from the start.
Case examples included in the presentation bring some of the complex topics involved to life:
- Eric’s story “100 FTE – not more, not less”: about AI helping to neither give in to the reflex of demanding “more resources” for every change, nor to the temptation of reducing headcount by any gains in efficiency by AI. -Lou’s story about weaving communication hubs across countries and use her AI bot to help its own roll-out and finetuning AI-teaching videos to her regional colleague’s habits, preferences and needs.
AI could have been used to propose ways to move forward with this project from the beginning – but the organisers knew well that “AI cannot have all the information that all the people in the organization have about their processes, and all the (many layers of) relevant contexts.”
Oh, and by the way, AI could also have been used to prepare this intro, and save me a lot of time. But that would also have spared me the joy of listening closely enough to the presentation, several times actually, to really better understand this very thoughtful way of supporting a big organization change itself “in a human way”. IMHO, studying this presentation yourself will be time well-invested!
Now, after watching this video, should I (or you!) buy and read Elvira’s books? Or have AI read and summarize them? Well, I may be AI dyslexic, but my joy from learning by reading can never be “summarized by AI”.
This content was originally presented at the 2026 SF24 Conference
Listen on SoundCloud
For further learning around Elvira’s work you may check out these resources and click on her profile below to find many more of her SFiO features.
Elvira Kalmár
InterAction Contributor
SFiO Contributor
Elvira Kalmár, Go Beyond Project, powered by Solutionsurfers® who supported the transformation and offers Solution Focused Organisation Development and Design courses (Native in Change) in Hungary, Switzerland and Belgium, and supports Organisations and Consultants with online mentoring.
Klaus Schenck
InterAction Contributor
SFiO Contributor
Klaus Schenck, Ph.D., became interested in models of “system dynamics” in 1976, became a “systemic consultant” in 1997, is an active contributor to the SF community since 2003.