In the AI Era, Three Things We MUST Talk About

AI Era communication is not just about how we connect with each other on work stuff. It’s also the global dialogue and rallying cries about what truly matters while letting the AI Genie out of the bottle.

AI creators and thought leaders agree that there are wonderful upsides and massive downsides within their work. But they all point to someone else to address the downsides.

So it’s up to us. We need to drive the conversation. Now. Urgently.

Because our leaders are dragging their feet.

If we don’t rally around the following three things, quickly, it will cost ALL of us dearly. (Be sure to enable images, important info in all pics.)

1. Our Fears Are Real and Must Be Addressed

FEAR OF JOB LOSS: The gurus tell us that only about 20% of us are currently at risk for total job eliminations — only 20%! Geez. Those loses will likely hit hardest those who are living paycheck to paycheck, or are already truly struggling… deepening existing economic inequalities. But we’re told, “Nothing to worry about here. Keep buying into ’AI Is Truly Amazing.’” WE NEED YOUR VOICE: We need to be much more vocal about all who will lose their jobs due to AI. This includes louder cries for retraining, upskilling, and lifelong learning programs, community and national support services. We need to do more have each other’s backs.

FEAR OF LOSS OF HUMANNESS: The first wave of AI targets are replacing people-to-people contacts with algorithms and smartbots. We are already losing humanness. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The fear is real. WE NEED YOUR VOICE: Human connections are even more important in the AI Era. It’s crucial that our workplace cultures, meetings, work routines, training and development deepen those connections. We need more bottom-up pressures on execs to ensure that that happens.

FEAR OF IRRELEVANCE: The Zone of Irrelevant Skills is very real. From a study by Indeed :

• About 80% of us will have at least some of our key skills replaced by AI
• For about 45% of us, GenAI can perform half to 80% of our skills at good or excellent levels
• For about 35% of us, GenAI can perform less than half of our skills
• Bottom Line: ALL of us will have some or lots of our skills dumped into the Zone of Irrelevance

WE NEED YOUR VOICE: Make your rallying cries louder! Every company that leverages AI needs to rapidly and radically ramp up retraining, upskilling, and lifelong learning programs.

FEAR OF INEPT LEADERSHIP: Based on what we’ve seen so far, it is ludicrous to trust corporate leaders to have our backs. While there are, of course, amazing exceptions, we should fear that today’s leaders are not prepared to lead us into a people-focused AI Era. To give you an idea of how much leaders do not have our backs, this from Jon Stewart’s recent Daily Show segment on AI :

• “AI is like productivity without the tax of more people.” ~ Brian Chesky, CEO, AirBnB (’The people tax’ is formerly known as ’employees.’)
• “Left completely to the market, these are fundamentally labor-replacing tools.” ~ Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI
• After firing 90% of his support staff due to AI, “It’s [only] brutal, if you think like a human.” ~ Suumit Shah, Founder and CEO, Dukaan

WE NEED YOUR VOICE: It took corporations decades to fully embrace the power of women and diversity of all kinds. (And the World Economic Forum says it will take about 200 years for women to achieve economic parity, globally.) Ugh! We don’t have decades for leaders to embrace bottom-up AI needs. We need action now. We need your passionate, frequent, loud callouts to radically change how leaders understand and address workforce AI Era needs. Without your voices, they will see us as easily replaceable labor, and take far too long to change.

2. Asking Five Workforce-Centered Questions, That Companies Refuse to Ask and Address

Early in my career, fresh out of an Organizational Development masters program, I designed project-specific employee satisfaction surveys. I was taught a valuable top-down lesson when clients nixed two-thirds of my questions: “We don’t ask questions we don’t want the answers to.”

Here are the top five AI Era questions that companies MUST get answers to, but are refusing to ask (because doing so puts them in the hot-seat for designing workforce-centered, bottom-up solutions):

• Can you achieve your personal dreams and goals by working here? (Jensen study: Less than 10% of us currently answer Yes.)
• Are we providing the retraining, upskilling, and personal agility support you need to succeed, thrive, and grow in the AI Era?
• Are our company-built tools and processes as good or better than any app or tool you can access, buy, or build for your own use?
• Do you believe our leaders have your back as they lead us into the AI Era?
• Has our use of AI made it easier for you to work smarter, not harder? Saved you time each day? Reduced your work aggravations and effort?

WE NEED YOUR VOICE in pushing and provoking companies and leaders to ask variations of these five questions — (because they won’t do it on their own) — and then to address the results they uncover.

The approach we need to leap into the AI Era is Design Thinking: Human-centered. Working backwards from the needs of the people doing the work. Here are three human-centered guiding principles for AI tools from GitHub :

• A tool should prioritize employee well-being and job satisfaction.
• A tool should enhance working experiences and workflows, not disrupt them.
• A tool needs to provide a measurable, meaningful amount of time back. (To each individual! Not just for company efficiency!)

3. Upskill Now

Reskilling and upskilling are not just about AI technology itself. It’s about the skills each of us need to thrive and succeed in this new era. The Jensen Group recently surveyed over 1,200 people about the core seven skills above. (Thank you subscribers for contributing! Mostly US-based responses, about evenly divided between senior execs, mid-managers, and frontline employees.) The results…

WE NEED YOUR VOICE: Take these results and speak out… Inside your company, in posts here on LinkedIn and elsewhere, to HR and Training, in town hall meetings… anywhere you can. Let them know you need immediate upskilling in these areas. Companies have proven that they’re hyper-fast on AI priorities that cut costs and deliver morebetterfaster, and are tortoise-slow on AI upskilling, reskilling, training, and development. Push for the upskilling that matters most to you!

Bottom Line...

It’s up to all of us. We are the ones who need to drive completely new AI Era conversations. The status quo without your voice is our riskiest option.

We need your voice. Now.

Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at [email protected] .