I recently took continuing ed classes about AI that emphasized how important it is to provide context when asking for an answer. One presenter suggested using the speak function and rambling on because, as he argued, there is no such thing as overkill in trying to help a machine understand the specific use case before it accesses all human knowledge collected since the dawn of time. “Urk. Look, Grok. Fire!”
There are benefits to emptying your soul to a microchip when getting creative work done. It can instantaneously cull the noise and emotion, leaving naked, cold, hard facts. Human listeners prefer organization, logic, meaning, and get sidetracked with pesky feelings. Microchips love to rank and number things. Human listeners think faster than you talk and wonder when you last had your teeth cleaned.
Next, I learned, you must clearly and with excruciating detail define the results you are looking for as well as explain what you do not want. AI is good at assuming and guessing to appear confident; these incorrect or incomplete answers are called hallucinations. People, not wanting to appear incompetent, are bad at assuming and guessing; their incorrect conclusions are called opportunities for feedback, such as, “Boy, you are dumb as a yard dog.” - see my autobiography, p697.
Back to reality. Many bosses do the opposite: they are ambiguous about outcomes and super-detailed about work-steps and tasks. This is thinking for others. Sure, there are times - children, newbies (one time), offensive tackles (kidding), children.
Why do some supervisors and project leads treat direct reports and co-workers like children? Here are some common justifications:
- I am too busy to explain all the whys and wherefores
- No one can do it as well as I can
- It takes too long for me to teach someone else how to do it
- There’s only one way to do it
- I want to make sure there are no mistakes
- dot, dot, dot
Thus far, computers are ambivalent about leader preparations and competence, but zig-zag management is hard on humans.
A better title for this post, then, is “What should I be thinking about for my people?”
I will continue under the assumption that you want to tap into the creative possibilities of our species rather than treat people like unfeeling machines.
What should you be thinking about for your people? It’s not tasks. If you give recipes to your people, you have probably been lazy and not finished the hard work of describing what success looks like. Why are we doing this? What outcomes are we after together? What will be the evidence of a job well done? What will we measure? When will we measure? This forethought is the hardest work, and you must do it first. Again, this is serious brainwork, and it is tempting to skip it or jump right to thinking for others.
Provide your team with an unambiguous, complete purpose statement (sans tasks) up-front, and you will save time, lower stress, improve performance, get better results, and they will hoist you on their shoulders to carry you about as if you just liberated France.
Then get out of the way and let your people think. They’ll figure out how.
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." — George S. Patton, War As I Knew It, "Reflections and Suggestions" (1947, published posthumously from his notes).
