If AI was an employee: the illusion of simple management

The AI obsession is not over.

New tools are being deployed on a weekly basis, and automation junkies are engineering endless ways to get many kinds of tasks done without the need for human intervention.

We are obsessing over AI for many reasons. Some of them:

• AI can perform tasks that have been traditionally exclusive to human beings, such as writing articles, creating art, and providing thoughtful insights.

• AI represents an unprecedented level of technological advancement: many of us didn’t expect to witness it in our lifetime. Our generation’s version of the first human landing on the moon.

• It’s remarkable how pervasive AI has become, even in its early stages of development. Its accessibility is not limited to developers or rich individuals, as anyone can use it for free.

From a management perspective, the phenomenon is particularly interesting. For a manager, generative AI is like having an invaluable asset: a team member who simply does their job, can handle continuous feedback effortlessly, and doesn’t require constant attention.

The manager’s non-professional duties

Most managers are measured by how quickly and accurately they can get results.

Their chances of delivering those results relies on their teams.

[For the sake of our conversation we’ll put aside bad employees: those who will always find reasons not to work, that are busy with ego or workplace drama, or that don’t take the time to learn how to do their job at their best. We all know someone like that. That profile is not interesting to us right now, because there’s very little that a manager can do to change their team member’s character.]

**The other team members, those who are trying to do their job at their best, are – shockingly – imperfect.**Inevitably, at times they will be tired, frustrated, stubborn or distracted.They are human beings, and it’s their right to express those feelings.

But that’s exactly the point: they are human beings.

They do not work because of an innate desire to see their boss becoming richer or happier. They work because their job fulfills some essential functions in their human experience: it provides them with money to sustain themselves and their family; it allows them to get to know new people and develop genuine relationships; it opens opportunities to get a sense of progress from their own achievements and development.

People work because it serves many of their needs.

For the managers in the public, I’ll put it a bit more bluntly: your job includes duties that are not strictly related to your professional field, and you can’t escape them.

Management is a much more complex job than just making other people do their job (or your own job, if you are that kind of guy).

Either you look at your managerial practice with an integrative approach, trying to manage your team’s work while taking care of their overall professional experience, or you’ll suffer from low engagement, low key insubordination or high turnover.

This is true especially for team members in highly specialized positions, who know their own worth and can easily search for new professional homes.

The manager’s job: skill building and meaning making

I like to categorize the manager’s duties (besides the strictly professional ones) in two categories: skill building and meaning making.

I will shortly explain what I mean here and will provide more details in the upcoming posts. Make sure to stay tuned for the next issues of the newsletter and subscribe if you haven’t already.

Most research on employee engagement points at two major predictors of employee satisfaction: their feeling of growth and their feeling of impact.

A happy team member feels that they are learning and becoming a more capable version of themselves (skill building), and that what they are doing in their job matters (meaning making). Those feelings will raise the likelihood that they will put more efforts in doing their job well.

Important: a job that feels meaningful doesn’t always involve achieving world peace or creating life-altering impacts for customers. Quite often, employees find happiness and fulfillment in knowing that their contribution is indispensable for the smooth functioning of the company. Feeling valued and appreciated by friends and colleagues can also make a significant difference in how employees perceive the significance of their role.

Now, building their team’s skillset is relatively easy for a manager: it might require effort, but a wise manager understands that helping an employee upskill is good for everyone. This not only enables the employee to experience professional growth, but also enriches the company’s workforce with a more competent team member. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

The more complex one is meaning making.

Managers need to make sure that their team members are as far as possible from being alienated from their job: they should help them see and articulate how is their work necessary, give it a clear voice, and encourage conversations about the team’s thoughts and insights on their professional experience.

For many managers it feels like a waste of time. It‘s not.

In fact, is a space that can lead to meaningful conversations, a-ha moments and a strong commitment to the organizational vision.

AI is attractive because unlike human employees, it does not require constant attention from its manager. AI does not have to search for new skills or meaning. Humans need to develop skills and a feeling of meaning in their professional experience. It might feel like a hassle to manage them, but those two elements are also the reason why talented professionals can provide critical insights and creative problem-solving – better than most robotic alternatives.