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vs. Traditional AI Training

TRADITIONAL AI TRAINING LOOKS PRODUCTIVE. THEN NOTHING CHANGES.

A two-day classroom course, a generic AI 101 deck, an e-learning licence — and three months later your usage dashboard is flat.

Spicy Advisory replaces all of that with workflow-specific training: small cohorts, real files, founder-led delivery, and a custom GPT library that ships with every engagement. 1,500+ professionals trained at L'Oréal, Essilor, IGN, VUSION, Adisseo and ZELIQ. 4.98/5 average rating. 11 hours saved per user per week, measured 90 days post-rollout.

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11h

Saved/user/week post-rollout

4.98/5

Participant rating

25

Max cohort size per session

5–10

Custom GPTs shipped per engagement

WHY TRADITIONAL TRAINING
DOESN'T STICK

Three patterns we see in every post-mortem of a stalled AI rollout.

1

Generic curriculum, generic outputs

A pre-built deck about "what is an LLM" and a sample prompt for writing a marketing email. People leave knowing the vocabulary. They don't leave knowing how to draft their next quarterly review with AI.

2

Passive format, no real files

Classroom, e-learning, video — the trainee never opens their actual inbox, CRM, or spreadsheet during the session. So the new behaviour never gets attached to the real workflow.

3

Painful Tuesday — week-three drop-off

By week three the team is back to the old workflow. We call this Painful Tuesday. It's predictable, it's measurable, and it's what every traditional programme produces.

Read more in Why AI adoption fails in companies and Role-specific AI training.

WHAT WE DO DIFFERENTLY

Four design choices. Each one inverts the default of traditional training.

One curriculum per department, not one for all

Marketing's workflows are not finance's workflows. Sales workflows are not legal workflows. We design distinct module sets per business unit so every participant trains on the work they actually do.

On your real data, in the live tools

Participants bring real briefs, real CRMs, real spreadsheets and real PDFs. They leave the workshop with a working prompt library and 5–10 custom GPTs already wired into their workspace.

2–3 hour sessions, max 25 people

Long enough to ship something real. Short enough that nobody zones out. Small enough that every participant gets the trainer's attention on their own files.

Founder-led, not delegated to a contractor

Every workshop is run by Toni or a hand-picked partner who has shipped AI workflows in production. Not a generalist trainer reading off a deck they didn't write.

SIDE BY SIDE

Two approaches. Two very different post-90-day usage curves.

Spicy Advisory Traditional AI training
Curriculum Built per department around real workflows Pre-built generic deck (AI 101, prompt basics)
Materials Participants' own briefs, files, CRM, spreadsheets Sample prompts, fictional case studies
Format Live, hands-on, founder-led, 2–3h cadence Classroom day, e-learning library, recorded video
Cohort size Max 25 per session 50–500 in a single auditorium or LMS cohort
Trainer Founder or hand-picked practitioner Contracted facilitator, often new to AI
Output 5–10 custom GPTs + prompt library shipped Slide deck PDF, completion certificate
Success metric Hours saved/user/week at 90 days (we report it) Course completion rate, NPS
Post-training support Champions programme + GPT library maintenance None, or async forum access
Pricing model Per workshop / engagement, transparent Per seat, per year (e-learning) or per day (classroom)

DOES IT ACTUALLY WORK?

Three numbers we publish openly, measured across 50+ enterprise engagements.

11h

Saved per user per week

Measured 90 days after the engagement, across L'Oréal and Essilor cohorts. The number is achievable because the workflows trained were the workflows the team actually runs.

4.98

Average rating /5

Across every cohort, every department, every language. We publish it because role-specific training, taught by practitioners, is the easiest way to earn it.

1,500+

Professionals trained

At organisations ranging from CAC 40 listed companies to Series B scale-ups. Every engagement informs the next.

A few of the teams we've trained

L'ORÉAL · ESSILOR · IGN · VUSION · ADISSEO · ZELIQ

THE METHOD: 4 STEPS

From audit to measured ROI, in 90 days.

1

Usage audit — Week 1

We pull data from your AI licence dashboard (ChatGPT Enterprise, Copilot, Gemini) and shadow 4–6 power users to map current workflows. Output: a one-page map of where the hours actually go.

2

Per-department curriculum — Week 1–2

Each business unit gets a tailored module set. Marketing learns content workflows, sales learns prospect research, finance learns data analysis, HR learns policy Q&A GPTs.

3

Hands-on workshops — Week 2–8

2–3 hour sessions per team, max 25 people. Participants bring their real tasks. They leave with prompt templates, custom GPTs and automated workflows they use the next morning.

4

Champions programme + ROI report — Week 8–12

Internal champions get advanced training to maintain the GPT library. We deliver a written ROI report with before/after usage metrics and hours saved per user per week.

Method documented in full in:

Teach Them to Drive — The AI Adoption Playbook

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is this an AI training course in the traditional sense?
No. Traditional AI training is a fixed curriculum delivered to a passive audience — usually a slide deck, generic prompt examples and a certificate. We design each workshop around the actual workflows your team runs, using their real documents, briefs, spreadsheets and customer data. There is no single curriculum: there are as many curricula as there are departments.
Do you offer e-learning libraries or self-paced video?
We don't sell access to a video library, because every measurement we have shows e-learning completion rates collapse after week three (we call this Painful Tuesday). We deliver live, founder-led workshops, then leave behind a custom prompt library and 5–10 custom GPTs the team actually uses. If you need an LMS-friendly artefact, we record sessions on request.
Do you provide certifications?
We issue a Spicy Advisory completion certificate on request. We don't pursue formal accreditation badges because they correlate poorly with adoption. The metric we report on is hours-saved-per-user-per-week, measured 90 days after the engagement.
Can you train 200+ people at once?
Yes — but not in one room. The economics of a 200-person classroom session are seductive and the outcome is consistently disappointing. We run cohorts of 20–25 per session so every participant works on their own files. For a 200-person rollout, that's 8–10 sessions over four to six weeks, plus a champions programme.
What if our team has already done generic AI training?
About 60% of our engagements start that way. The pattern is consistent: people remember vocabulary, not workflows; they default back to one-shot prompts; the licence usage curve is flat. We start with a usage audit, identify which workflows the team is still doing manually, and rebuild the muscle memory around those.
How is this different from a consultancy AI strategy engagement?
Strategy decks tell the executive team what AI could do. We sit with the operators and make the new workflow run. The two are complementary — many of our engagements start where a strategy deck stops. Read the 90-Day AI Adoption Playbook in Teach Them to Drive for the full method.

FRAMEWORKS BEHIND THE METHOD

Proprietary Spicy Advisory concepts every engagement applies.

Activation vs Adoption

Why a paid licence is not adoption.

Workflow-first Training

Train the work, not the tool.

Skill Inversion

Why juniors out-ship seniors with AI.

Five Stages of Expertise Disruption

How AI rewrites senior roles.

90-Day AI Adoption Playbook

From pilot to measured ROI.

Painful Tuesday

The week-three drop-off — and how to design around it.

STOP PAYING FOR
TRAINING THAT DOESN'T STICK.

Book a free 30-minute audit. We'll review your current AI estate, your previous training, and tell you honestly what we'd change.

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