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Most companies talk about AI adoption. Sini Korpinen, Chief CX and Communications Officer at Attendo Finland, made it happen. So what did Korpinen do differently?
When Sini joined Attendo at the start of 2024, AI was the last thing on her mind.
"AI is not something you adopt first," she explains. "If you have broken processes, you won't fix them with AI."
Sini spent her first year at Attendo doing the unglamorous work. She fixed workflows. She defined roles. With her team, she built clear processes for everything from acquisition communications to crisis management.
Sini calls herself a "concept believer." At Attendo, that means having a clear template for every major communication scenario. Acquisitions? There's a workflow. New care homes? There's a process. Change negotiations? Documented and ready to go.
Only then Sini turned her attention to AI.
Every team has early adopters. The people who already have ChatGPT Pro on their personal credit cards. The ones testing tools in secret because they're not sure if it's allowed yet.
Sini knew exactly who these people were in her team. She gave them both the responsibility and authority to take the AI project forward.
“Find your early adopters. The team members who get excited about new things, achieve results fast, and love sharing what they learn with others.” She didn't lead the AI project herself. She trusted her digital marketing specialist and communications manager. They became the internal champions proving that this wasn't just another top-down mandate.
This move created peer-to-peer momentum. When your colleague tells you about a breakthrough, you listen differently than when your boss tells you to try something new.
Sini didn't let anyone opt out.
She listened to all of them. But she made it clear: everyone should use these tools to work smarter.
"I have people in my team who are very excited about this, but I also have people who approach it more critically and question the work," Sini notes. "I listened to the questioning and criticism, but didn't allow someone to completely opt out of the work."
She found individual use cases for everyone. “Don't want to use AI for writing? Fine, use it for analysis. Uncomfortable with content generation? Try it for research and data compilation.”
The key was equal expectations with flexible paths. Everyone needed to engage with AI. How they engaged could vary.
Sini sees her role clearly: she removes obstacles.
While her team focused on learning and experimentation, she handled IT, negotiated with data privacy officer and made the case to other executives.
"As a leader you need to understand what you don't understand," she reflects. "If you're not on top of it yourself, you need to find the right collaboration partners."
This wasn't about protecting her team from difficult conversations. It was about letting them focus on the work that mattered: figuring out how AI could make them better at their jobs.
She also made one thing crystal clear from day one: nobody was losing their job because of this.
"When we started this project, I thought it was really important to constantly communicate to people that I'm not reducing anyone because of this," Sini emphasizes. “If someone is afraid that AI will replace them, they can't work effectively.”
Fear kills innovation faster than anything else. Sini eliminated it upfront.
Sini has created a space where learning isn't extra, it's expected.
"When someone new starts in my team, I always say I have four important expectations for everyone. One of which is that I expect the work to constantly improve," she explains. "And I don't mean just that we grow as people, but also that we actively move the work forward."
The AI adoption project was not only about AI. It was about creating an environment where trying new things felt normal, where admitting you don't know something felt safe, and where experimentation was part of the job description.
A year ago, Sini's team thought AI would write all their press releases and social media updates.
Today, they're doing something far more interesting. AI analyzes their brand tracking data and competitive performance. It audits websites monthly. It creates sophisticated analyses from raw research data and helps solve core strategic problems instead of just assembling surface-level content.
What can easily happen with AI is that people outsource their thinking to AI instead of using it as a thinking partner.
"I still want us to think things through," she says. "AI gives us very well-developed drafts. Just like you get a draft from another colleague, sometimes that draft is great and you change two words and send it on. While sometimes we need to go back a bit and rethink."
The solution? Keep communicating standards and reminding people that AI is a collaborator, not a replacement for judgment.
Sini isn't done. Next year, she's looking at automation and integration projects. She wants to automate several parts of their workflows. It's the same pattern. Fix the fundamentals. Then add the technology. She's also wants to spread the marketing team's success and learnings across the entire organization.
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