I have attended many events over the past few months where the future was the main topic. And, naturally, the conversation almost always turned to AI. What can it do today? What will it be capable of tomorrow? Which tasks can it take over? Where does it make companies more productive?
We are currently investing a great deal of time in figuring out what machines can do.
And at some point, a thought occurred to me:
I believe: usually not.
We know what profession someone trained for. What their position is. What is written in their job description.
But do we know who in our company is particularly good at recognizing patterns? Who can explain things well? Who brings people together? Who finds unconventional solutions? Who has a skill they don't even need in their current job?
Often, we only find out when it happens to become visible by chance.
In the past, we might have been able to afford that.
But AI is not just changing our tools right now. It is changing what we need humans for.
When machines can write, research, analyze, code, and access ever-increasing amounts of knowledge, it doesn't automatically mean that humans become less valuable.
Recognizing what is truly important. Connecting things that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with each other. Questioning a supposedly correct answer. Or asking the right question in the first place.
And that is exactly where I see a great opportunity.
We don't just need to consider which tasks AI can take over in the future. We can simultaneously rediscover what we humans could be doing.
Because our companies are full of people with experiences, interests, and skills that we have often never asked about.
We just don't see them as long as we confuse people with their job descriptions.
Perhaps we should be at least as curious about everything our people can do.
We might be in for a surprise.
