Pawena Kaniah.
Everyone’s talking about AI. Most of it sounds the same: automation, productivity, scale. But buried under the hype is a deeper truth we rarely say out loud: AI doesn’t just change what you do, it changes who you are. It learns from your systems, absorbs your culture, and quietly reproduces your values at scale. That’s the story we need to tell more.
How Culture Gets Codified
We assume that AI will 'accelerate us', but accelerate what, exactly? Productivity? Progress? Bias? The issue isn't just speed, it's blind trust in outputs, without understanding how those outputs are built on inherited assumptions.
In theory, high-performance cultures are built on values like learning, adaptability, and collaborative autonomy, at least, that’s what organisational behaviour theory tells us. But in practice, agency culture tends to reward something else entirely:
- Speed over nuance
- Certainty over curiosity
- Polished decks over messy experiments
So, when AI plugs into a performance culture like this, it doesn’t elevate the culture, it reinforces it. It codifies the behaviours already rewarded, making them harder to question.
Rethinking What Performance Means
At iProspect, we talk about a “performance mindset”. For the agency, performance has never just been about pace, rather it's about the pace of change. There's a fine nuance there.
It’s about making space for experimentation and building structures where new ideas, and new people, can thrive.
To build an AI-powered performance culture that empowers teams, we need to replace 'hours saved' with 'ideas surfaced' and 'efficiency' with 'equity of input'
These aren’t just metrics. They’re signals of what we value. And when organisations start rewarding the surfacing of better ideas over speed alone, AI begins to serve a very different purpose, one that finally starts to align with culture.
A Case for Cultural Fidelity
In 2023, instead of measuring AI success by hours saved or response time, P&G focused on cultural fidelity. How? They identified a recurring customer care frustration: parents struggling to find the right diaper size. And that’s how they created Pampers MyPerfectFit, an AI-powered sizing tool within the Pampers app that recommends the optimal diaper size based on your baby’s age, weight, height, and fit details to help prevent leaks. Instead of using AI to fire off more human-like FAQ replies, P&G saw a smarter spot in their Impact-Effort Matrix: build an app that mirrors their top experts, offering personalised sizing advice. It wasn’t about automating responses. It was about delivering smarter, fairer support. That’s AI for equity of input, not just efficiency.
AI as Cultural Mirror
AI isn’t neutral. It never was. It’s not “just a tool,” and it won’t magically free up your time so you can “be more creative.” That narrative, the one we keep echoing in keynotes and creds decks, is a comforting distraction.
When optimisation trumps imagination, AI won’t inspire bold thinking, it’ll simply fast-track our business as usual.
Because let’s be honest: we don’t lack AI tools. We lack the strategic vision to use them meaningfully.
Every organisation now “uses AI.” They prompt ChatGPT for headlines. They use Midjourney to spice up concept decks. They optimise CPMs with a touch of machine learning.
Cute.
We’re acting like AI is the new intern, here to do the grunt work.
But the reality is, AI isn’t a junior employee you leave alone, hoping it learns the ropes. It’s a mirror, reflecting any organisation’s values, flaws, and hidden priorities. Unless we’re intentional about where and why we're deploying AI, actively teaching it through structured feedback loops, it won't ever think beyond standard best practices.
That’s not just productivity.
That’s a cultural reckoning.
So, no, AI isn’t your intern. It’s your cultural mirror.
And if AI mirrors your culture, the real question becomes: What do you want it to reflect back?
Pawena Kaniah – Strategist, iProspect, a dentsu company