We Are All AI Immigrants Now: A New Land, A Proven Mindset

By Jayshree Seth

Key Takeaways

1. Generative AI has made immigrants of us all — almost everyone, regardless of expertise or seniority, is navigating genuinely unfamiliar territory where no map yet exists.
2. The GRANT framework — Grit, Resourcefulness, Adaptability, Navigation skills, and Transcendence — described first in the context of the immigrant experience, proves equally essential for AI adoption in the workplace.
3. Leaders have a specific role in cultivating each element of this mindset: modeling iteration, rewarding experimentation, normalizing change, building navigational judgment, and elevating the voices of those who have crossed the territory the hard way.

The first time I landed in the United States, I was certain I had prepared for everything. As much as I could, I suppose. The winter clothes would have to be bought there. But I had packed enough Indian spices to last a year. What I hadn’t packed — and couldn’t have — was a map for what actually awaited me.

I arrived at JFK airport having travelled one leg of the journey in what was still called the ‘smoking section’ of the plane, pounding headache and all, too hungry to think clearly because I couldn’t confirm the in-flight snacks were vegetarian. I missed my terminal, wrenched my arm loading heavy luggage onto a bus, discovered my airline — Piedmont — no longer existed, landed in Syracuse without my contact or my bags, and accepted a ride from a stranger. When I told a few folks I was heading to Potsdam, they looked at me blankly. “Near Massena? Canton?” It took me a while to realize: many weren’t unfamiliar with the destination. I was just pronouncing the names wrong. I had only ever read the words — never heard them spoken aloud.

I did make it. And as I look back, I realize I took notes.

I have written about the GRANT framework before: Grit, Resourcefulness, Adaptability, Navigation skills, and Transcendence. These in my view are hallmarks of what is often called the immigrant mindset: a capacity to move forward without a map, to improvise when systems fail, and to arrive somewhere more evolved than where you started, changed by the crossing. 

What I want to say now is this: that same crossing is happening again. And this time, every one of us is making it.

No Natives in This Territory

When it comes to generative AI, we are all immigrants. Almost every one of us. The tools are new, the norms are unwritten, the landmarks keep shifting, and the airline you counted on may not exist by the time you arrive. No one really — not the technologists, not the executives, not the researchers with thirty years of expertise — is navigating from solid ground right now.

I see this in my work leading AI use cases for R&D at 3M. The professionals who are making real progress are not necessarily the most technically sophisticated or AI savvy. They are the ones bringing something older and harder-won: the willingness to be lost for a while, and to keep moving anyway. They are, whether they know it or not, drawing on the immigrant mindset.

The question is not whether you will be disoriented. You will. The question is what you bring to that disorientation.

GRANT, Applied

Our journey shaped by this mindset can carry us through. Here is what each element of GRANT looks like when applied to AI adoption.

Grit is the decision, made repeatedly, to keep going when the system fails you. In AI, that means treating a hallucination or a failed prompt not as evidence that the technology is useless or that you are incapable, but as the first data point in a longer learning curve — using our diligence to make most of the “artificial diligence” of AI.

Resourcefulness is working with what’s available rather than waiting for perfect conditions. The teams generating real value from AI are not waiting for enterprise rollouts or certified training programs. They are sharing prompts informally, experimenting across functions, building peer knowledge networks. 

Adaptability is the ability to grieve the familiar quickly and find the next available path. Piedmont Airlines no longer existed when I arrived at the gate. The AI tool your team built a workflow around six months ago may already have been surpassed. Adaptability means releasing the expectation that the landscape will stabilize before you engage with it. It won’t.

Navigation is reading unfamiliar terrain without a map — knowing which tool suits which task, when to trust an output and when to verify it, how to read the unwritten norms of AI use inside your organization. This is not a skill that arrives with a certification. It is instead built through cumulative experience, peer learning, and a willingness to recalibrate.

Transcendence is where the journey becomes generative. The immigrant who once couldn’t pronounce the name of a destination can evolve as a guide for the next arrival. In AI, these are the professionals who crossed the territory the hard way and can now translate it for others — who become the bridge-builders, the internal champions, the people who make adoption real not through mandate but through example.

What Leaders Can Do: Cultivating the GRANT Mindset

The immigrant mindset is not just a personal resource reserved for a few — it is something leaders can actively cultivate in their teams. 

Here is what that looks like in practice:

1. Model grit publicly. Let your team see you iterate, fail, and try again with AI tools. Fluency is built through visible practice, not performed expertise. This is especially important given the impact of AI on team trust and psychological safety.
2. Create latitude for resourcefulness. Reward experimentation and informal knowledge-sharing, not just sanctioned use cases. The prompt someone shares across a hallway may be worth more than a formal training program.
3. Normalize the update. When AI tools change or workflows need to be rebuilt, treat it as the nature of the territory rather than a failure of planning. Adaptability is a cultural signal, not just an individual skill.
4. Build navigational judgment, not just compliance. Policies tell people what they can and cannot do with AI. Practice builds the judgment to know when outputs can be trusted, when they need verification, and when human insight must lead.
5. Find your transcenders — elevate their voices. The people in your organization who have crossed this territory the hard way, who struggled, adapted, and found their footing — are your most valuable guides. Identify them. Give them a platform.

The Permission You’re Waiting For

Once I learned to say things like the natives, people could finally understand where I was going. The destination had been real all along. I just needed to find the right language for it.

That is where most of us are with AI right now. The destination is real. The path is uncertain. And the required GRANT mindset is not something that needs to be acquired from scratch. For anyone who has ever navigated something genuinely unfamiliar, it is something they already possess.

We are all immigrants now. And immigrants, as it turns out, may know exactly what to do.