Copilot for Managers?
Much like AI came for artists first, it might affect the Manager role quicker than we think.
I've been poking around chatgpt and others trying to decide whether it can replace me. Spoiler: no.
But LLMs are really good at capturing intent and synthesizing solutions based on available literature. Which, assuming that the literature is high quality, does lead to pretty solid solutions for simple common problems.
I’m talking about everyday problems like:
Bob is an experienced developer but lately the quality of his work has gone down
I’m stuck on this project. These are my stakeholders and this is the story so far. How can I get unstuck?
Alice is a great system designer but her new team isn’t listening. How can I facilitate?
There are tons of great books and blog posts out there that cover these situations in exhaustive detail. LLMs like ChatGPT know about them and are really good at giving answers including:
Things you might not have considered
Checklists to go through
Possible steps to take
Some tools like phind.com even link back to content which has informed the solution, which is a great opportunity to do further research and learn a bit.
So far the main limiter is that I can’t feed real information about problems I’m encountering. Because of privacy and security concerns.
Also, I know there's unique value to my experience, context and perception that an LLM can't replace. Quite often, problems are merely symptoms and the root cause goes deeper. An LLM won’t be able to diagnose those.
And I just don’t see ChatGPT making strategic, staffing, budgeting, product design, technology direction, etc, decisions any time soon if ever. Those are definitely out of the question until we get some kind of General AI.
But for simple, everyday situations, I think an LLM could save a lot of time. If we can solve the privacy problem (and companies like Azure and Lengoo offer options) then an AI Assistant for Managers would be totally doable.
Someone somewhere must be building Copilot for Managers and it’s going to be not only a time saver, but also raise interesting existential questions about our role.
Interesting question and reflection, Pedro.
I'm probably biased, but what we know about change and learning is that it requires us to make our own connections and arrive at our own insights. That's why coaching, when done well, is probably the most effective way of helping people change.
I am not (yet) seeing anything AI-based that can act in such a way as to spark that type of insight that can only come from being asked the right questions at the right time within the person's unique context. Not to mention that a big part of coaching is the resonant connection between two human beings that trust each other, something we're evolutionarily very attuned to.
Never say never. But for now, I'll say "not yet."
I, for one, would welcome our AI overlords eerrmmm my handy AI helper :) I see a number of disjoint tools, it'd be nice to have a tailored toolkit.