Train people inside the real work, not beside it. For agencies: AI training that sticks because it happens on live briefs, with the whole team.
The Craft Transfer Method rests on a finding from learning science: a skill transfers to real work only when the practice environment mirrors the work environment. Training that happens in a separate tool, on someone else’s sample files, teaches people to be good at the training, not good at the job.
The method has four steps, in order: map the craft, train inside the work, train the team together, and bring leadership in. Each step fixes a specific, documented reason AI training fails, and the order matters because those failures compound.
Most agency AI training is a one-off workshop on a demo dataset, followed by a quiet return to old habits. Each step of the method targets a reason that happens.
Map the craft. Before any session, build a discipline-by-discipline heat map of where AI reduces risk and saves time, and where it threatens the craft a role is built on. A production designer swapping templates and a brand illustrator defending a signature style are not on the same map. Placing each person as resistant, assisted, or transformed gives you a baseline to measure against.
Train inside the work. Practice happens on a real brief, a real client file, and a real deadline, with production hours blocked for it. Real work also teaches the skill that matters most with AI: supplying context.
Train the team together. Campaigns move from strategist to copywriter to art director to producer, and AI changes every handoff. A shared session leaves the agency with one vocabulary and one quality bar.
Bring leadership in. When leadership skips the training, staff stop asking permission and quietly use unapproved tools. Leaders sitting through the same session sets the standard and keeps AI use in the open.
A 40-person agency is about to train its staff on AI. Instead of booking a half-day demo, the creative director first sorts every role onto a three-point map. Then the team takes one shared session and applies it the next week to a live retail client brief, with two protected production days set aside for it. The strategist, copywriter, art director, and producer work the handoffs between them on that one brief. The managing partner sits in the same room and uses the same tools, which is why nobody has to hide their prompts from her afterward.
The automations and agents module of the workshop teaches you how to build AI workflows that compress the busywork without taking the craft out of the studio.