Just last week, James Raybould wrote about what it means to become an AI-first organization. His message was clear: unlocking AI’s full potential means every team—HR, legal, finance—starts with AI as their default problem-solving tool.

At Turing, that’s not aspirational—it’s operational. Our People team, dealing with the realities of hypergrowth, realized quickly that our existing stack couldn’t scale with us. Data was scattered across Slack, spreadsheets, and standalone systems. No one had a unified view of the talent journey.

We could’ve waited 12–18 months for a traditional enterprise HRIS—expensive, rigid, and slow to deploy. But instead, we embraced what we started calling our new internal motto:

“We’ll AI our way out of this.”

We built the first version of Mission Control ourselves in Replit—no code required. Then we partnered with Turing Intelligence and InfoSec engineers to bring it to scale. The result: one interface that consolidates five-plus disconnected tools, automates cross-functional workflows, and gives leadership complete lifecycle visibility.

By the end of the year, we expect Mission Control and ALAN together to more than double the impact of our [human] People Operations Specialists—improving the support ratio from 1:1,000 to 1:2,000+ team members, without compromising service quality.

We’re still exploring long-term, enterprise-grade solutions—including a robust HRIS. But we’re not waiting around to deliver value.

At a two-day offsite, we built a fully functional version of Mission Control. It wasn’t polished, but it worked. We had our Turing Intelligence and InfoSec engineers in the room with key stakeholders, iterating live on workflows. In 48 hours, we built what would’ve taken quarters in a traditional product cycle.

This worked because the People team was in the lead. They knew what was broken. They understood the friction points. And they are designed based on how work actually gets done, not just what tech could do.

Form still matters. But when you’re solving at scale, function comes first.

We do use off-the-shelf systems, but this kind of internal build brings all those fragmented tools into a single, purpose-built interface.

And this approach isn’t unique to us. Amazon’s generative AI strategy for Alexa and AWS emphasizes fast iteration, co-development with customers, and continuous learning. That mindset—build fast, learn faster—is how we design tools that actually get used.

If you want your functional teams to build AI tools like ALAN or Mission Control, it’s not just about buying the right tech. It’s about investing in the right culture. Here’s what’s worked for us:

1. Encourage your teams to prototype.

Mission Control started as a quick prototype built by a non-coder. What made that possible? A culture that encouraged experimentation and gave teams a safe space to build. Your people already know the problems—they just need the support to solve them.

2. Embed engineers inside the business.

We embedded a Turing Intelligence engineer directly into the People Team. It changed everything. That hands-on collaboration bridged the gap between idea and execution, and accelerated results without overwhelming core engineering.

3. Create a pathway from MVP to production.

Pilots are only useful if they scale. We set up a structured handoff process so that working prototypes could be hardened, secured, and deployed. That kept momentum high and ensured teams saw their ideas turn into impact.

“We’ll AI our way out of this,” isn’t a challenge to technologists; it’s a motto that needs to be embraced across the business. In my recent post, Transforming HR workflows with AI, I wrote about how this mindset helped our team solve a variety of challenges, from rapidly onboarding 800 new employees in a single week, to upskilling staff, to validating technical skills. 

In every case, AI, along with human ingenuity, was the answer. Success came from giving our team the autonomy, tools, and support they needed to build their own solutions.

With the right approach, your next most impactful team member might not be a person at all, but the AI solution your people built themselves. That's exactly what we've discovered with ALAN.

We’d be happy to share how we’ve approached the technical and cultural foundations to make it happen. 

Talk to a Turing Strategist