← Work with Erika Ayers Badan
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Welcome back to work. This is unsolicited advice. Today we are talking about AI and Management. Network. I wrote this in my substack the other day, but I was having a conversation this weekend with my GPT about what's going to happen when AI and generative AI kind of takes over the world and eats up all the jobs and you know, gets into the mix of everything and overtakes everything and anything like what's going to happen. And so I was having this conversation with my agent, which sounds like a funny thing to say, like instead of having an agent, I have an agent. But anyways, so my agent was saying, so we're having a conversation about it. My agent was saying that essentially what makes humans human is going to be the superpower that humans have over AI. So the antidote to AI and the counterbalance to, to AI are the things that make people people vices. Making the same mistake over again. Feeling emotions like shame, doing things that are idiosyncratic, being silly, being unpredictable, being spontaneous, creative thinking, thinking far into the future and also dwelling largely in the past. These are all that AI will never do, can't do, won't do, will never do. And what's interesting when you think about AI at work and you think about AI and management is the things that often make great managers are those things right? Being human, being empathetic, being sensitive, communicating, adapting communication to different environments, different styles, attitude, like physically, how you show up every day, the energy that you bring to things, the aura that you throw off. And so you know, one of the things I think about as it relates to AI and management is that one the smartest, best managers are going to adopt and adapt to AI. So I think about it like we're in the process right now at food 52 of, of inventorying everything, right? Like so we're trying to count how many chairs and how many desks and how many plates and how many bolts and how many this, that and the other thing. There's a super manual way to do that on pencils with paper and making lists and doing things manually and taking all the pictures and doing all the things. And then there's a wildly automated way to do it through AI and through technology that's already been built. Good managers, productive managers, proactive managers, forward looking managers will adopt AI to make their people and make their teams and make themselves most efficient. They will not dwell on the manual tasks. I find the most grating thing as a manager a lot of times is how much time is spent in busy work. Not in thinking, not in connecting, not in strategizing, not in looking to the future. And I think great managers will create a baseline that AI is here to make us more automated. AI is here to make things faster. And it's not. The thing of it though is that it's not to make humans obsolete, eat. It's that humans need to and people at work need to focus on the things that only they can do. Like, why waste your time doing something that can be done much more efficiently? Do put your time into things that are far more creative, far more exploratory, far more personal, far more interconnected. And I think that's going to be the difference maker for managers. There's going to be a set of managers that have their heads in the sand, that don't think about technology, that don't think about automation, that are afraid, afraid of AI. Then there's going to be a set that just like punts everything to AI and it's a bunch of shitty stuff that nobody cares about or looks at. Like it's perfunctory but not great. And then there's going to be a set that says, hey, I'm focusing on where the growth is, I'm focusing where the change could happen. I'm focusing where the impact can be made. And using AI to buy more time, more strength, more creativity, more impact from the people on their teams. I think one of the biggest misinformations in management is like, and I was victim to this early and kind of mid in my career, like the more people you manage, the better. Like it's gonna be better the bigger your org, the more power you have. But the reality is managing people is a pain in the ass. And the more people you have is just the more problems and the more bureaucracy you spend your time in. And so really thinking about how do you have less people, how do you make those people greater and how do you use the tools at your disposal and the tools that are evolving to be at your future dispos, to enhance your impact and to create time and space and energy for the things that are difference makers. So that's how I think about AI and management and AI and leadership. I think the other thing of it is like we had a conversation here the other day and someone was like, well, I don't use AI, I don't like AI. And that's like a stupid thing to say. Like that would be like, I don't use my cell phone, I don't use cell phones. Like when the cell phone came out and everyone's like, I only trust a landline. Small side note, I had this roommate in college, and my job was to bring the phone for our room. And she was like, I only. I need a landline because I deal drugs. And essentially my dad's a lawyer, and he's afraid that if I use a cell phone, if I use a cordless phone, that the police will intercept my drug deal messages. Literally, this legit conversation my freshman year of college, and I was like, huh, that's seems like, kind of bizarre that, like, whether there's a cord or not means somebody's intercepting the message. But not using AI is like, no, I'm going to stick with the corded phone. So, like, don't. Don't be like that. That's just a silly way to be. But the other piece of it is don't devolve into just like, AI slop. You know, don't devolve into. I see this a lot. Like, I look at people's writing and it's like, all right, you just, like, put that into AI and it has a bunch of buzzwords in it and doesn't actually say anything. Like, use AI. Your AI. Have your AI prompt you to make you smarter, to buy you time and to enable yourself to open your mind and open the people that you work with to do something greater. So that's it for work. Thank you for listening. This is unsolicited advice. You can also listen to work conversations. You can get Net. Net. You can follow us on substack. You can follow me on social media. I'm at Erica or at Erica. And we'll see you back here next time.