Introducing Operator Experience
A small, invite-only community for operators learning AI-era skills together
Scroll to the bottom of the article for flyer on Operator Experience.
Between November and December 2025, I interviewed 40+ leaders and operators at consumer brands. I spoke with people at different levels within brands turning over £10m to £250m.
I asked really straightforward questions about AI: their attitudes, confidence levels, practical usage, and what pressure they’re feeling.
One trend dominated each conversation.
Nearly everyone, from CEOs to early-stage operators, was certain AI would reshape how they work day-to-day and how their business operates. But they didn’t know where to start. Most didn’t trust the noise they heard online. And most were trying to figure it out alone.
The pressure is real
There’s another layer to this. Nearly every operator I spoke to admitted feeling insecure about their competition moving faster on AI. The fear isn’t abstract.
It’s that a rival brand is already automating processes, improving margins, or accelerating decision-making while they’re still figuring out where to begin.
That stress compounds when owners, investors, and board members keep (unhelpfully) asking “what’s your AI strategy?”
It’s a question that sounds reasonable but often creates paralysis. Most operators don’t need an AI strategy, they need to identify specific tasks worth automating and start building capability around those. But when you’re being asked for a strategy deck while trying to run the business, the gap between expectation and reality gets uncomfortable fast.
This is exactly why isolation doesn’t work. When you learn with peers who are facing the same questions and the same pressure, you realise you’re not behind, just figuring it out like everyone else. And that shared context accelerates everything.
The L&D gap
AI literacy was a top priority for every People and HR leader I spoke with.
Then I asked the follow-up: what programmes exist to solve this? What are you actually doing about it?
The answer was almost always the same. Not much. A few vendor webinars. Maybe some online courses that nobody finishes. But nothing credible. Nothing structured. Nothing that actually builds capability across the business.
There’s a clear gap between what brands know they need and what’s available to them. And it’s not for lack of trying.
I think we need to approach AI literacy differently. Traditional L&D (courses, one-size-fits-all training) isn’t fit for purpose. AI is moving too fast. The day someone creates a definitive course on leveraging AI inside a fast-growth brand is the day it’s out of date. The technology shifts rapidly, and the applications are nearly infinite.
So the questions I keep asking myself are: How do we help operators understand where automation creates leverage in their specific role? And how do they learn to apply it alongside peers facing similar problems?
Right now, that doesn’t really exist at scale.
What we’re creating
Operator Experience is a small, invite-only community for people running complex parts of modern businesses: operations, finance, commercial, merch, product, tech, logistics, growth.
It’s launching publicly this month with the support of a group of brilliant partners. The group will meet four times per year. Our first workshop is in Manchester on 16th April, with London following in July and more cities through 2026 and beyond.
We’re intentionally keeping this tight-knit, capping the number of brands but encouraging each to bring multiple people from across their business. The biggest winners in the AI era will be brands that organise cross-functionally to automate and augment work. We’re practising what we preach.
If this sounds relevant to you or your team, get in touch with me directly on luke@commercethinking.com
More at operatorexperience.ai
