EP 270 - From AI Awareness → AI Readiness → AI Adoption with Jennifer Hufnagel

Host Susan Diaz sits down with Jennifer Hufnagel (Hufnagel Consulting), an AI educator and AI readiness consultant who's trained 4K+ people. They break down what "AI readiness" actually means (spoiler: it's not buying Copilot), why AI doesn't fix broken processes or dirty data, and how leaders can build real capability through training programs, communities of practice, and properly resourced AI champions.

Episode summary Susan Diaz and Jennifer Hufnagel met in "the most elite way possible": both were quoted in The Globe and Mail about women and AI.

Jennifer shares her background as a business analyst and digital adoption / L&D consultant, and how she pivoted when clients began asking for AI workshops right after ChatGPT's release.

Together, they map a simple but powerful framework:

AI awareness (practice + play, foundational learning, early change management)

AI readiness (software stack, data quality, workflows, current state, and - quietly - the "people audit")

AI adoption (implementation, strategy, and ongoing integration)

Jennifer explains why "audit" language scares people, but the work is essential - especially talking to humans about what's frustrating, what takes time, and where fear is showing up. She shares what she's seeing after training thousands: AI fluency is still low, people obsess over tools, and many assume AI will solve problems that are actually process or data issues.

The second half gets practical: what "workflows" really mean (step-by-step checklists), how AI now makes documenting processes easier than ever (voice → SOPs), why prompt engineering isn't dead but "100 prompts for your bookkeeping business" is mostly snake oil, and why one-off training sessions don't create real fluency.

They close with how to build sustainable AI capability: proper training programs, leadership-led culture, communities of practice, and protecting champions from becoming unpaid help desks.

Key takeaways AI readiness is the middle of the journey. Jennifer frames AI maturity as: awareness → readiness → adoption. Most organisations skip readiness and wonder why adoption stalls.

Readiness includes software, data, process… and people. You can call it a software/data/process audit, but you still have to talk to humans about their day-to-day work, pain points, and fears. That's where the truth lives.