The most valuable skill in an AI world?Thinking for yourself.
As AI drafts, decides and answers for us, the muscle of independent thinking is quietly wasting away. This workshop rebuilds it, so your team can use AI without outsourcing their judgment.
- Half day or 1 day
- In person or remote
- 8 to 30 people
- Tailored
◆ We've built capability for teams at ◆
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The problem
AI is making us faster, and quietly making us think less.
Cognitive debt is real
An MIT study found heavy AI users showed weaker brain engagement, less ownership of their work, and worse recall, with effects that lingered after the AI was gone. MIT Media Lab, 2025.
Trust in, thinking out
The more knowledge workers trusted AI, the less critical thinking they did, offloading judgment instead of applying it. Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, 2025.
The skill fades with disuse
Across 666 people, heavier AI use tracked with weaker critical thinking, and the effect was strongest in younger, digital-native users. Gerlich, Societies, 2025.
What you'll walk away with
By the end, your team will have
- A clear rule of thumb for when to trust AI and when to think it through themselves
- The ability to spot flawed reasoning, bias and confident-sounding AI errors
- Sharper questioning: better goals, better prompts, better challenges to an answer
- Tools to pressure-test ideas and arguments as a team
- Daily habits that keep the thinking muscle strong alongside AI
What we cover
The flow of the day
- 01
Why AI erodes thinking
The evidence, and the mechanism: cognitive offloading and how it creeps in.
- 02
The critical thinking toolkit
Reasoning, logic, and spotting the biases that trip everyone up.
- 03
Interrogating AI
Where thinking now lives: forming goals, writing prompts, and judging output.
- 04
Argument and evidence
Build a case, then break it. Steelman, red-team, and weigh the evidence.
- 05
Thinking as a team
Structured debate and dissent that gets to better decisions, together.
Who it's for
Who should be in the room
The heaviest AI users are the best fit.
Knowledge teams and analysts
The people leaning on AI daily. They are the most exposed to the erosion.
Leaders and decision-makers
Anyone whose real job is judgment under uncertainty.
Whole teams
Cross-functional groups who make calls together.
Format and logistics
How it runs
Duration
Half-day primer or 1-day deep dive.
Delivery
In person or purpose-built remote.
Group size
8 to 30 is the sweet spot.
Tailoring
Built around your team's real decisions and tools.
Facilitator
Steve Glaveski
Founder of Collective Campus, 2× Wiley author and HBR contributor who writes on AI, productivity and how we work. Steve runs these sessions himself.
Proof
What changes afterwards
“They now question everything, see things through a different lens, and have started to spread that approach throughout the business.”
Related reading
Ideas on AI, independent thinking and the calls a team still has to make, on The S Curve.
FAQ
Questions we get asked
Is this an anti-AI workshop?
The opposite. It is about using AI well: keeping judgment sharp so AI makes you faster without making you worse.
Do we need any technical background?
None. It is about thinking, not tooling, and it is built for any team.
Can you tailor it to our work?
Yes. We build it around the real decisions and AI tools your team uses.
In person or remote?
Both, with a remote version built for genuine discussion.
Keep your team's edge in an AI world.
Tell us the decisions your team is handing to AI. We will shape the day around them.