I feel like I’m missing the boat on AI. How can I use it to gain a competitive advantage?
The Globe and Mail
Published June 25, 2025
Question: I’ve been resisting using AI in my work life, but it feels like I’m missing the boat. How can I use AI to gain a competitive advantage at work instead of fearing it?
We asked Sarah Stockdale, founder and CEO, Growclass, to tackle this one:
If you’re even thinking about this and contemplating how to use AI in your work, it means you’re already ahead of the game. Women are 20 per cent less likely than men to use ChatGPT at work in the same occupation.
If you are new to AI, there is a tool called LMArena. It allows you to put in a prompt and it will have two different large language models give you results. You choose which result you like the best, then it reveals what tools you were using, so maybe ChatGPT versus Claude. It’s mostly used by AI researchers, but if you’re getting to know the tools, it’s a fun way to try them and get a sense of what outputs you like and what aligns best with how you think and write. Perplexity also allows you to access a bunch of the different models.
Then, I would start building things. Use tools like Dify or Lovable to start patching things together. As long as you’re not putting proprietary data in or opening up your company to risk, you can play around. Don’t immediately jump in to try to build things for work. Build yourself a little scheduler or a personal dashboard for the day. Let it be low stakes. My friend Avery built something for her teenage daughter that tells her if she needs to wear a coat that day or not. You don’t need to know how to code and a lot of these tools are really user-friendly and beginner-friendly.
At Growclass, we are working with The Forum and Camp Tech to build something called AI Skills Lab Canada. Camp Tech has the Early AI Adoption Lab, which is for folks very early in their tech journey. We also have the AI Strategy and Operations Lab, which is for founders and leadership practitioners who are a bit further in and are figuring out how to integrate AI into their workplaces in ways that feel value-aligned and ethical. We’re specifically working with women business owners because that’s where there is a gap in adoption.
The longer you wait and the more you build it up in your head, the more challenging it’s going to feel. Learning anything is kind of like doing the splits: You just have to do it every day. It’s going be painful the first couple of times and then three weeks later you’re going to be able to do the splits. It’s the same with using these tools. The stretching is going to a bit painful but that means that you’re learning, and we should do that as adults more. Lean into that curiosity.