ROLE DESCRIPTION · FOR SENIOR STAFF REVIEWDRAFT

The AI Guides.

On July 29 we agreed that after this engagement wraps, the AI work lives with 3 to 4 AI Guides from across the team, backed by an external retainer. This page is the draft role description, written so people know exactly what they're putting their hand up for. Please mark it up before we share it with staff.

What a Guide is

A Guide is a colleague who knows the terrain: where AI genuinely helps at Echidna, where it doesn't, and where the red lines sit. The name is deliberate. A champion cheers for the tool; a Guide walks the route with you and tells you when a path is a bad idea. Guides carry explicit license to say "this reads like AI and it shouldn't" as kindly as they'd say "let me show you a faster way."

A GUIDE IS

The first person a colleague asks before their manager: "could this be a workflow?"
Hands-on in the sandbox, trying things so others don't have to start cold.
The keeper of the prompt library and the shared examples, wins and failures both.
Licensed to call out poor, lazy, or risky AI use, without it being a disciplinary thing.
The voice of their region, level, or team in how the policy evolves.

A GUIDE IS NOT

IT support. Account and access problems still go to the ops team and the IT partner.
The AI police. Guides guide; managers manage.
A cheerleader. "Don't use AI for this" is a fully valid Guide answer.
A new job. This sits inside your current role, at roughly 10% of your time or less.
Permanent. The group runs for about a year, then we all assess what it should become.

What Guides commit to

Real sandbox time: actually using the chosen tool on your own work, so your guidance comes from practice.
Being findable: colleagues know you're a Guide and can bring you questions without ceremony.
A regular debrief cadence with the group and the external retainer: what's working, what's wobbling, what the team should hear about.
Feeding the shared library: prompts, examples, and honest failure stories carry equal weight.
Flagging red-line brushes early and kindly, so small things stay small.
Helping new joiners find their feet with the onboarding pack.

How the group gets formed

Hands up first: after the staff survey results land, anyone interested says so, with no guarantee of selection. If someone we think would be excellent doesn't raise a hand, we'll have a quiet conversation. The final group of 3 to 4 balances regions, levels, and kinds of expertise, since a Guide group that's all one office or all one seniority level guides nobody. The survey results will help spot natural candidates, and the group needn't be finalized until training starts in September.

Support behind the Guides: Guide sessions with me in September and October cover the go/no-go framework and the handover, and the external retainer continues after close for the questions that need deeper expertise. Nobody is being left to figure this out alone.

The one-year checkpoint

This structure runs for roughly a year. At the checkpoint we look at where the traction actually is: which workflows stuck, what the Guides keep getting asked, and whether the work has grown to where a dedicated role (like the data hire we've discussed) earns its place. Until then, no hire, by design.

Draft prepared by SA Advisory, August 2026, following the July 29 senior staff session. For Kim, Emily, and Dana to review before anything is shared with staff. The name AI Guides won the room; Sherpas remains the standing alternative if the team feels otherwise. Comments → aggarwal.shabnam@gmail.com