I write for owners and leaders of design, construction and service-based firms. My posts cover strategy, leadership, culture, and where AI actually fits. D4 Concepts is the firm I started with Mike Witt. Subscribe if you want them sent directly to you. A little over 2,000 people already do.
Your team is about to become a team of managers
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A new way of working means new jobs, even for people who keep the same title. As AI systems start to take on more of your team's hands-on work, the humans around them will need to shift into a different role. Someone has to train these systems, give them context, delegate to them, and monitor what they do. That's not a small tweak. It's a different kind of work entirely. Knowledge workers start acting like managers.Less hands-on data entry, analysis, document creation, and report generation. More designing workflows, training, context-setting, delegating, and monitoring. That's a management skill set, and most individual contributors have never needed one before. Responsibilities shift toward oversight.Someone owns making sure the AI or agentic system has what it needs to do its job, and someone owns noticing when it breaks and fixing it. Those are new lines of responsibility most org charts haven't drawn yet. Workflow design becomes a leadership job.This isn't just about tools - as important as they are. It's about redesigning how work moves through your team to actually take advantage of what these AI systems can do. This is a massive shift, and it's coming over the next few years, not the next few decades. Implications for Your TeamWhat are you doing right now to think through what skills your people will need?
A lot to think about for our teams of the future. Getting ready for what's next, Micah Ray P.S. If you want help thinking through an organizational strategy that accounts for AI, reply here and let's talk. Or book a 15-min call to chat and share what your team needs. |
Micah Ray
I write for owners and leaders of design, construction and service-based firms. My posts cover strategy, leadership, culture, and where AI actually fits. D4 Concepts is the firm I started with Mike Witt. Subscribe if you want them sent directly to you. A little over 2,000 people already do.
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