Guardrails First. Then Strategy. How AMCs Can Lead the AI Moment 

Sarah Timm, CAE, CMP-HC, President & CEO, Parthenon Management Group, AMCI Board Chair 

"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself — it is to act with yesterday's logic." - Peter Drucker

Confession time… I have been thinking about AI almost every day for the past year. Not because I have figured it out (because I absolutely have not!) but because I believe how our industry responds to this moment will define what association management looks like for the next decade. Over the last year, I have realized the AMCs who seem to be navigating this well aren't the ones who moved fastest. They are the ones who slowed down just enough to put some structure in place first.  They are the organizations that have defined guardrails and discussed it openly with their clients first and then developed a strategy.

Before putting AI tools in your team's hands, it's worth getting the basics in writing. An internal AI use policy doesn't have to be complicated. It just needs to answer the question: what are we comfortable with putting into the private, licensed model, and what aren't we? What tools, for what purposes, under what conditions? Now note, I said licensed model. Make sure you are listing the approved AI programs for your staff.  Many are open and share any inputs to the model and are not closed.  Be careful to use and invest in licensed models only. If you’re not sure how to get started with your own AI policy, AMCI provides a handy template to its members.

The client piece matters just as much. If AI is touching a client's work in any way, they deserve to know and approve its use. Developing an addendum for existing contracts is one way to achieve this.  Allowing clients to explicitly authorize AI use and specify that client work stays in a society-specific, closed account rather than an open environment where data could be exposed is key for transparency as an AMC. I believe it is important for an AMC to have a conversation with their clients before something goes sideways.

Then comes the harder part: training your people. This is where I feel least certain and most curious. Across conversations with AMC peers, a pattern keeps coming up. Early career staff are often either unsure where to start with AI, quietly avoiding it, or carrying real concerns about job security, about the environmental cost of the technology, about whether using it conflicts with their values. Those aren't small things. They deserve honest acknowledgment, not a pep talk or mandate on how to do their work. We are not looking for ways to eliminate positions at Parthenon Management Group.  We are looking for ways to level up our staff.  How can they do more for our clients, achieve those strategic outcomes rather than focusing on the mundane tasks AI could accomplish. I ask the team if you had two hours more in your workday by working more efficiently, how would you use it?  This will push the team to level up and creates even more of a challenge for AMCs.  The workforce development challenge is becoming more of an issue for us. Upskilling your early-career staff in AI is no longer a nice-to-have, it's becoming a core part of development. The junior staff member who learns to use AI thoughtfully today is your strategist, your client lead, your next emerging leader. If we don't build that capacity intentionally with our teams through training, mentorship and space to try AI, we are not just leaving efficiency on the table, we're leaving careers underdeveloped. This is an opportunity for AMCI as a community, too. How are we sharing what works? What does AI-era professional development look like for our industry?

AMCI is beginning to build that shared learning infrastructure. It is AI for AMCs: A Practical Starting Point resource page that gives firms a place to begin, and AMCI is also launching a research initiative focused on AI's impact on the AMC business model. The first phase, a Sector Outlook Session, will bring AMC members together to examine where the industry is headed, see what AI makes possible today and help shape the research that will matter most to their firms. That collaborative approach is important. The goal is to help AMCs move ahead of this shift, not simply respond to it after the fact.

Additionally, AMCI's four-part EduSeries with Trent Gillespie offers another practical way to keep moving. The upcoming session, Beyond the Pilot: How AMCs Get AI From a Few Power Users to Everyone, on September 15^th at 1pm CT focuses on the conditions that turn isolated use into organization-wide adoption: people need to feel safe using AI, supported in using it, expected to use it and rewarded for using it well. Just as important, firms need clear targets, so experimentation leads to operational change. The session will help leaders identify where work is genuinely worth changing and which integration opportunities to pursue first.

From my discussions with AMCs, many of you have a clear path forward and others are not sure where to begin. One idea that seems to resonate when I share it: ask each client team or department to identify three tasks they do regularly that feel repetitive or time-consuming, like meeting minutes, routine member communications, monthly report summaries, etc. Then build a simple prompt around each one. Not a perfect prompt, just a starting point to test, refine, and share. I have found that if you get staff using it in one key area to save time, they will find others.

    1. Find your internal champion, someone curious enough to experiment and willing to share what they're learning with the rest of the team. 
    2. Make space to practice. A monthly "AI office hour" with no deliverable attached gives people permission to try things and fail without stakes. 
    3. Pair people intentionally. Skeptics often come around faster when a peer walks them through something than when it comes from leadership. 
    4. Share the small wins. When someone saves two hours on a task they used to dread, tell that story.  
    5. Reframe the conversation around growth. The team member who gets comfortable with AI becomes the strategic contributor your clients increasingly need. That's a career asset, not a threat.