Everyone is focused on AI these days. And that focus has been on how AI makes our jobs easier, makes us more efficient, frees up our time. We are enamored with with all the tools, tricks, techniques. We absorb 100s of prompts that do our work for us. And we discover new hacks every day.
But once we’ve done all of this, once we have maximized our use of AI (granted it will keep evolving), what’s left for us to do?
We may discover in certain highly transactional environments, there is nothing left for us to do. AI can do the entire job! Those jobs will and should be eliminated.
But then, we will also discover the things that AI can’t do. And the question becomes “can we do those things?” Can we do the things that AI can’t do?
Here are some of the things it can’t do, and may never be able to do.
- Sit with the customer in a moment of uncertainty, perhaps confusion, understanding this and helping them move forward.
- Understanding the unspoken tension that underlies their meetings with each other and within themselves as they navigate something they may have never done before.
- Recognize when something may have gone off course, where they may have gotten diverted or lost their focus. Helping them recognize this, get back on course, or perhaps, shift their direction.
- Addressing the deeply human questions that arise in the moment and vary from situation to situation.
- Helping them recognize an opportunity to change, improve, imagine something they may have never thought of before, but which might be a game changer for what they do.
- Helping them understand and navigate ambiguity, uncertainty, risk. And in doing so building their understanding and confidence they are doing the right thing
- Helping them understand the change and what it means. Change isn’t about the mechanics, it’s about how we help our customers make it happen.
- ……and the list goes on……
AI processes patterns, humans sit in the messiness of everyday life and how to get things done. Only we can help them manage this messiness.
I’ve been writing a lot about “friction.” AI avoids friction, humans must learn how to harness and navigate it.
So the question becomes, Are we prepared to do these things? Do we have the deep customer, problem, and business acumen to connect with the customer where they are at? Do we have the curiosity to see something that may be off, probe more deeply to understand it? Do we have the critical thinking/problem solving capabilities to be able to help our customers understand and address these issues? Do we have the ability to engage our customers in deep collaborative conversations helping them move through these challenges? Do we have the empathy and caring to build trust with the customers in working with them?
Let’s be honest with ourselves. Most of us weren’t doing these things! We hid behind our scripts, playbooks, tools. We focused on volume and velocity. We focused on the things that weren’t important to the customer–despite their shouting, “This isn’t helpful to me! I don’t need a pitch, I need something else.” AI is taking all that we did to, all the things we hid behind giving the appearance of being busy. And what are we left to do, because AI has taken what we are doing away
There are many things that AI can’t and may never do! Doing these things becomes our jobs! Are we prepared to do them? Do what that work really is? Do we understand how critical it is that we actually do these things? Are we ready to do the things that only we can do?
AI will completely change our jobs, and it doing so, it will make our jobs tougher. We’ve been so focused on the things that AI can do and how it makes it easier for us, that we’ve forgotten the most important part of the conversation.
There’s another important aspect to this. We’ve framed our jobs in the context of what we do today. We have marketing doing demand gen, lead gen. We have SDRs/BDRs doing their thing, AE/AMs doing their thing, specialists doing their things. We have our processes, our demos, our playbooks. We have metrics that track how much we are doing so we understand if we are on track.
And our thinking on AI is all done in the context of what we do today.
And our fears about, “Will AI take my job,” are all based on the context of what we do today.
And we are missing the point!
We are thinking of things based on our current models, biases, and the way we do things.
What AI is challenging us to do is to turn that upside down and completely re-imagine things. What are the new jobs, what are the new opportunities, where can we have the greatest impact.
I was struck by a quote from Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang:
“If we have no new ideas,and the work that we’re doing is precisely all that needs to be done … and no more than what humanity will ever need, then when we become more productive, we will need fewer people doing that work.”
“However, if you now look at history and you ask yourself: ‘Do I have more ideas so that, if I were to be more productive, I could do more?’ Then, you would describe a condition that reflects human history — that we have become more productive over time.”
“We’ve become more productive raising crops, but it’s not like all of a sudden, as a result of mechanization, everybody ran out of work.”
“Everyone’s jobs will change, some jobs will be unnecessary. Some people will lose jobs. But many new jobs will be created. … The world will be more productive. There will be higher GDP. There will be more jobs. But every job will be augmented by AI.”
We are focusing on the wrong thing. We are obsessed with how AI will impact our current jobs and whether our jobs will disappear. We aren’t thinking about the new opportunities it will create. We aren’t thinking about what AI can’t do and must be done. We are missing the point, the question isn’t “Will AI take my job?” The question is “What job should I be doing now that AI exists?”
I am hugely optimistic about AI. It has caused me to change virtually everything that I do, raising the bar and making me think differently and work differently. What is exciting is AI has made my job, not harder, but forced me to rise to new challenges.
I can’t think of anything more exciting! I hope each of you are as challenged and excited by this opportunity as I am!
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. It’s pretty good and it’s brief. Enjoy!
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