At Liatrio, we’ve been investing heavily in our internal Forge program as part of our ongoing journey as an AI-first company.
Forge was established to be more than a one-time training session or set of slide decks about AI trends. It’s an immersive, hands-on program built around learning by doing. The focus is on real-world practice: setting up the tooling, learning the workflows, working in AI-native repositories, and building the habits required to use AI effectively in day-to-day delivery.
We knew early that we needed this to be real, meaningful, and build on what we’ve learned, so the investment in our people and time is significant.
We bring our team members out of their routine work for multiple weeks. By focusing on these new ways of working, we develop the muscle memory needed to sustain the momentum. The expectation isn’t just to “try AI” as our team uses AI daily. The goal is to develop real fluency, understand how to maximize our productivity with AI in a practical, disciplined way, and how to turn experimentation into repeatable outcomes.
We move quickly. Everyone demos multiple times per week. We collaborate on what works well and iterate on what needs improvement.
That’s what has made this valuable.
Our team is actively applying what they’re learning in the flow of real work, using AI to accelerate research, improve documentation, sharpen solution development, support internal enablement, and rethink how we approach work with our clients.
We’re also seeing the team build stronger instincts around the full experience of AI-enabled work:
- Resetting expectations on making this repeatable, getting development environments and tools rebuilt for real usage
- Learning structured workflows for AI-assisted delivery (I.e. Spec-Driven Development)
- Exploring what makes a codebase and workflow more “AI-native”
- Building bespoke agents, expanding scaled workflows with agentic teams
- Practicing hands-on problem solving
- Thinking about security and scalability early
- Sharing what works across the team as solutions evolve
This program and our commitment are ongoing.
For us, Forge is helping create the space and structure for a longer-term shift in how we work. We aren’t focused on vanity metrics for adoption because people are using a new tool. It’s building the capability, confidence, and operating habits that make AI useful in real environments.
What we’re seeing already with the first few cohorts:
- More confidence in using AI in everyday work
- Faster iteration on ideas, content, and solution concepts
- Better internal knowledge-sharing across the team
- Building common understanding and terminology that helps move one-off productivity improvements to a higher level of team improvement
- More intentional thinking about what being AI-first actually looks like in practice for ourselves and our clients
Building an AI-first culture happens through repetition, experimentation, and shared learning over time. We're proud of the Liatrio team for leaning in, learning fast, and helping shape what this looks like in practice. If your organization is on a similar path, we're happy to share what we've learned along the way.
