Will AI Replace Managers? 3 Strengths AI Can’t Match
This article was written by Jim Miley and published by Crossroads Professional Coaching.
You can certainly automate business processes and decision criteria in your business. There is no question that you can put systems in place to guide how things are done and gain efficiencies that you may not realize without those systems and AI, artificial intelligence, tools are accelerating the impacts across nearly all industries.
But it’s important not to let systems, automation and AI replace good management by good people.
I’m not going to bury the lead here. AI and automation aren’t eliminating good business managers; potentially good business managers are eliminating themselves through over-dependence upon AI and automation.
The question posed in the title of this post forces us to consider what constitutes good business management. Is it all about efficiency and financials or should the human elements carry more weight in how you manage your business? Can AI and automation replace the performance of human managers?
A Faith-Based View of AI in Business Management
As I sat down to write this post, my clarity on the topic went a bit fuzzy. As soon as my fingers hit the keyboard, I realized that people may not agree upon what defines good business management.
Crossroads Professional Coaching’s key differentiator in the business coaching space is working from a faith-based foundation of Christian values. I’m somewhat predisposed to seek out and exploit the uniquely human competitive advantages in our application of automation and AI tools…. Like the Sarah Connor of The Terminator stories.
We have been uniquely created to participate in God’s plan and digital tools are akin to the calculator or the personal computer. These tools are for our mastery and support; not our replacements.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph 2:10
The question in my view is, “how am I to use automation and AI to best fulfill my obligations as a good steward in God’s plan within the teaching of Christ?” Jesus places a high priority on love, compassion and caring for my neighbors. Jesus instructs me to place a lower priority on the things of the world. Jesus is particularly pointed on warning against the love of money. How do we reconcile wanting to optimize efficiency and financial performance through the application of automation and AI with the teachings of The Gospel?
Simple but not always easy. We’ve always been called to be strong stewards of our work going back to the apostolic time.
Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Mat 10:16
We are not to abandon our values in the faith in Christ through our pursuit of efficiency gains or the application of any business tools. We are called to do both, be shrewd and gentle or innocent as the ESV translation says.
Why Managers Are Replacing Themselves with AI
The speed with which AI and other automation tools have emerged into our lives is unprecedented. I believe many managers are leaning a little too heavily upon AI out of fear they’ll be left behind if they don’t; hence, my previous point stands that the risk of losing good managers to AI can be self-imposed.
The argument over human logic and insights versus machine learning models is beyond the scope and not the point of this post so I’m intentionally not going there. The point I want you to take away is that good business managers have an opportunity to shine by not letting themselves get lost through the application of automation and AI.
If managers are not careful and intentional about leveraging their uniquely human strengths, they will become a self-fulfilling prophecy of poor performance and obsolescence.
Management Skills AI Can’t Replace
Since the explosion of AI onto the business scene, I have observed a number of human competencies that AI and automation just miss. Consider these to keep your good management skills from collecting dust.
- Setting the Right Pace for Your Team
AI models and associated automation tools are great for helping good business managers fulfill their accountabilities and complete tasks faster than ever before. It stands to reason that if the manager is able to move tasks faster than ever, expectations will be for the team to move faster than ever. If the team members move faster, are the customers moving faster? Are your people burning out? Is the quality of work being lost to higher volume?
AI models and automation help us move faster but they are completely ignorant to the right speed for processes and transactions that are heavily populated by humans. A good business manager is keeping their finger on the pulse of their team members as individuals, their internal and external customer relationships and how the operation is running beyond the numbers.
A good business manager will adjust the speed of business to optimize the performance of their team in serving their internal and external customers.
- Leading People as Individuals, Not Data Points
Our last Crossroads staff book study was The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni. Best-selling author Lencioni argues that a good team member must have three critical virtues; they must be humble, hungry and smart. Humility is necessary for sharing credit, recognizing peer contributions and owning mistakes. Hunger is required for the drive to perform and contribute. Smart is more similar to emotional intelligence than IQ or classic book smarts; smart is how well they “get it.”
Being a good team leader or a good team player is a uniquely human quality. A good team leader is a strong observer of people. Good team leaders will recognize individual strengths and weaknesses and make adjustments to assignments for optimum team performance. God did not create us to a uniform set of specifications and we are called to recognize unique gifts in how we interact with the members of our team.
A good business manager will avoid letting business tools influence them to force everyone into the exact same mold of behavior or performance. People have never been uniform and the machines can’t change that.
- Making Decisions with Incomplete Information
I said comparison of human logic and insights versus machine learning models is beyond the scope and not the point of this post but I will cite one data point in support of human advantage in analysis.
According to research by Lake, Ullman, Tenenbaum and Gershman published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, humans learn from far fewer examples than machines. People build causal models of the world and reuse what they already know, while AI mostly finds statistical patterns in huge datasets. I see this as a behavioral scientist’s description of the human capacity for educated guesses; it can be a strong advantage where the information available for decision making is incomplete.
If we have all the required data inputs for a detailed analysis to guide a decision, let the machines have their moment. I often quote an old mentor of mine in saying, “anybody can work with black and white, high performers are comfortable navigating the grey.”
Good business managers must be adept and comfortable navigating in the world of grey where automation and AI models are extremely limited.
Use AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement
AI and automation should not be eliminating good business managers but they probably are where the managers turn their job over to AI. Good business managers should recognize their unique advantages and use the tools at their disposal to improve not to be replaced.
Consider how you are leveraging AI and automation in your business and make sure to not let your uniquely human leadership skills get too rusty.