A.I. Won’t Eliminate Managers, But It Will Redefine Leadership |
As A.I. automates information and routine decision-making, it is forcing managers to confront whether they truly know how to lead people. Unsplash
The discourse surrounding artificial intelligence in the workplace is thick with dystopian forecasts and utopian promises. Will it eradicate jobs or usher in a new era of human creativity? For managers and leaders, the question is more pointed: will advances in A.I. make my role obsolete? The answer is a definitive no. A.I. will not replace managers. It will, however, act as a great accelerant, stripping away the administrative crutches many have leaned on for decades and laying bare a critical deficit in our organizations: the inability to genuinely manage people.
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See all of our newslettersFor more than a century, the prevailing management model has been one of command-and-control. Managers were expected to be the nexus of knowledge, the primary problem-solvers and the arbiters of work. Promotion into management was typically a reward for attaining technical proficiency in a particular area, creating a legion of what the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has called “accidental managers”—individuals promoted for their knowledge but utterly unprepared for the human complexities of leadership. In the U.K. alone, the CMI estimates that 82 percent of managers receive no formal preparation or training to take on the people management aspects of their........