What will be the place of AI in the company of tomorrow and what will be its role alongside managers? The answer, however, is not as drastic as NetDragon Websoft’s latest announcement suggests. If AI isn’t ready to replace your manager, it could still provide valuable assistance in structuring knowledge within the company. Far from replacing them entirely, it will relieve them of a number of routine tasks, allowing them to focus once again on their strategic missions. Welcome to the era of the “augmented manager”.
The company of tomorrow will be “evolutionary” (evolutionary company), comfortable with continuous changes and always ready to develop its business model. In order to develop, it will have to focus on its data and knowledge. It is in this context that AI could prove to be an important ally for managers: by offering them the possibility of piloting decision support systems, it will relieve them of additional tasks by proposing optimal solutions based only on data.
The driving role of AI in structuring knowledge in business
Managers currently play only a minor role in structuring knowledge, even if knowledge represents a strategic asset for a company. One of the major challenges for the company of tomorrow will be to be able to write down one’s knowledge, preserve it and mobilize it to develop other activities.
Through its ability to open up the field of possibilities, AI can help companies structure themselves around their knowledge and processes to capitalize on them. In concrete terms, it can be about helping companies to switch to new activities or to stop non-significant projects. The companies that grow best are those that have already adopted this type of approach. Artificial intelligence will help the manager grasp the problem of knowledge capitalization.
Towards an “augmented manager”: when AI gives the manager a strategic dimension
Managers are currently under called in terms of decision support and are rather confined to a “validation” role. The rise of information technology in recent decades has robbed them of some of their decision support capabilities. By automating a large volume of expert opinion generation and retrieval tasks, AI will be able to do this point hundreds of solutions very quickly and give managers perspective. It will then provide them with toolsets and data sets. Decision trees, machine learning and algorithms will better structure decision making and channel the combinatorial explosion.
Far from being a danger, AI represents an opportunity for managers, who will be able to regain their strategic place and their autonomy in terms of decision support. AI is now able to reproduce company reasoning and processes, but the manager will always keep the final decision of the choices that will be made. He will therefore not be replaced by the AI, but will become an “augmented manager”.
AI & manager: drawing the outlines of a new tandem
Managers have no reason to feel threatened by the emergence of artificial intelligence in their daily lives: it will allow them to refocus on the strategic dimension of their work.
Suppose tomorrow AI is fully integrated into managers’ decisions, how to manage the distribution of tasks between man and machine?
Artificial intelligence allows you to automate some classic routine tasks. It’s also much more efficient than the manager for managing reports or ratings. These recurring activities now account for approximately 70% of a manager’s time, compared to 30% for strategic and decision-making activities. We can imagine that tomorrow this proportion will reverse thanks to the contribution of AI.
Therefore, AI will not replace the manager but will allow him to focus on higher value-added tasks. It is thanks to this real-time collaboration that the manager will be able to create more value for the company and make the best possible decisions to structure the future.
AI at the service of the manager: more than a tool, a new mentality
Artificial intelligence is not just a tool for managers, it is also a mentality and a method. It plays an important role in business transformation processes and in the way people work and will work in the future on a daily basis. AI-based approaches have an extremely strong social dimension: the specific and easily structured skills of the employees will be highlighted and supported by the AI while the specific and complex (not easily structured) knowledge will remain in the hands of the employees.
On the other hand, given the tense environmental context in which we live and the imperatives to reduce our carbon footprint, it is no longer possible to design solutions by dividing tasks in the traditional way. Artificial intelligence will make it possible to explore new solutions and think in new ways.
Tribune written by Pierre-Emmanuel Dumouchel, co-founder and CEO of Dessia Technologies