More AI, more people skills needed
It’s clear that technology professionals will see their roles transformed with artificial intelligence, requiring skills refreshes and learning new approaches. Not so clear is the impact of AI on career prospects for business managers and professionals, with confusing messages about job replacement and usurping of decision-making authority.
The rise of AI, particularly generative AI, is likely to have a strong impact on managerial and professional jobs, an analysis by Rakesh Kochhar of Pew Research suggests. “Jobs with a high level of exposure to AI tend to be in higher-paying fields where a college education and analytical skills can be a plus. Workers with a bachelor’s degree or more (27%) are more than twice as likely as those with a high school diploma only (12%) to see the most exposure.”
Yet, the Pew study also suggests, professionals in more exposed industries do not feel their jobs are at risk – “they are more likely to say AI will help more than hurt them personally. For instance, 32% of workers in information and technology say AI will help more than hurt them personally, compared with 11% who say it will hurt more than it helps.”
Vittorio Cretella, CIO of Procter & Gamble, doesn’t see AI as replacing human talent, but rather, amplifying those talents. “The continued rise of AI will change the type of work we do, and how we do it, but augmenting rather than replacing human capabilities,” he argues. “We will still need the skills of digitally-savvy, creative human employees who can work effectively with machines.”
AI “will have a profound impact on employees across the whole organization, not only on expert roles such as data science or machine learning engineering,” Cretella points out. “Nearly all employees, regardless of function, will need to get familiar with working with machines, exploring insights and leveraging recommendations which may often be different from what their previous experience would suggest.”
For corporate leaders, the priorities of the AI age must shift to greater investments in “talent and upskilling employees while in-sourcing strategic capabilities such as data science and machine learning engineering,” Cretella advocates. This calls for a balancing act among managers and executives, who “must facilitate the combination of human and machine strengths, creating the organizational focus and culture that encourages continuous learning and the application of AI to improve business outcomes.”
AI, implemented successfully, “will amplify human skills, not simply substitute, or replace them,” says Cretella. “Key human-centric skills include curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, compassion and collaboration.”
Where humans will make the greatest difference is in problem definition, he continues. This consists of “decomposing a problem through key questions and identifying patterns before attempting to define an algorithmic solution. We need leaders and teams to focus on that phase to develop inquisitive skills and dedicate enough time before skipping to solutions.”
P&G’s approach is to “always start from the job to be done, whether is about maximizing media reach, improving manufacturing quality or defining the shelf layout for the best consumer shopping experience,” Cretella illustrates. “What matters is the capability to define the hypothesis and problems, the curiosity to explore data and the power of AI to find the answers.”
It still takes curiosity, and a sense of what people need, to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive economy. “Technology alone does not change things – people do,” he emphasizes. “The future of management is with an AI-savvy generation of business leaders who are curious, have little or no cognitive bias, and understand which organization design, processes, and resources are needed to unleash the power of data and machine learning.”
