Generative AI can support creativity—but only if you use it strategically. Simply giving people access to AI tools doesn’t guarantee better ideas. What matters is how thoughtfully they engage with the tool. Here’s how to make it work. Use AI to build your creative capacity. AI helps you gather knowledge and free up mental bandwidth. Use it to explore diverse inputs, reframe problems, and offload routine tasks so you can focus on more demanding ones. Don’t stop at the first answer—dig deeper, combine ideas, and reshape insights into something new. Strengthen your metacognition. Creativity depends on how well you reflect and adjust your thinking. Employees who plan, monitor, and refine their approach get more value from AI. Treat outputs as drafts, not decisions. Ask, “What’s missing?” and “What else could this look like?”—then push for better results. Train your team to think better with AI. Help people improve their metacognitive skills. Offer simple checklists or short exercises that build habits like checking assumptions, identifying knowledge gaps, and testing alternatives. Over time, these skills turn passive users into creative thinkers. Design workflows that reward iteration. Position AI as a collaborator, not a crutch. Create systems where employees review, challenge, and build on AI outputs—together. This tip is adapted from “Why AI Boosts Creativity for Some Employees but Not Others,” by Jackson G. Lu et al.