How AI Could Reshape the Path to Professional MasteryHow AI Could Reshape the Path to Professional Mastery
We know a lot about how agentic AI will change workflow. What we all need to learn more about is how humans can keep getting opportunities to acquire the expertise that comes from doing something early and often until they can do it well.
When I read the Bloomberg article, "McKinsey Leans On AI to Make PowerPoints, Draft Proposals," the first thing I thought of was prolific writer Stephen King.
It wasn't because he's been writing killer fiction about agentic AI or consulting firms, though if you're looking for King's take on the transformative effects of technology, you need to read his short story "Word Processor of the Gods" in the collection Skeleton Crew.
Rather, it's because King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is an excellent primer on craftsmanship as a whole, and one of his most useful rules applies to work habits beyond writing: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
Aspiring writers should do these things because they create habits of mind that will help hone one's skill level: doing the activities which help amass professional knowledge and expand professional skill creates "an ease and intimacy" with more technically difficult and ambitious work, and it offers the practitioner the benefit of learning from experience so you don't make the same mistake twice.
In the Bloomberg article, McKinsey global leader of technology and AI Kate Smaje said:
Do we need armies of business analysts creating PowerPoints? No, the technology could do that. Is that a bad thing? No, that’s a great thing. It’s not necessarily that I’m going to have fewer of them, but they’re going to be doing the things that are more valuable to our clients.
The article doesn't mention what valuable things the junior staffers are doing now that they're free of the slide deck tyranny -- which is a pity, because it would be great to have a major company explain how its early-career hires are picking up the necessary hours to master their crafts.
A few weeks prior to the Bloomberg piece, the New York Times ran an opinion column from LinkedIn Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman, "I'm a LinkedIn Executive. ISee the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking," in which he wrote:
Unless employers want to find themselves without enough people to fill leadership posts down the road, they need to continue to hire young workers. But they need to redesign entry-level jobs that give workers higher-level tasks that add value beyond what can be produced by A.I.
In the examples given, new accountants are now doing work that used to be reserved for folk with a few years' experience and new lawyers are interpreting the kind of complex contracts that used to be reserved for third or fourth year associates.
It's also worth noting that in both of the fields Raman mentioned, the professions have a rigorous accreditation process that requires intensive training and study before being licensed to practice, so the people affected had done their vocational equivalent of King's recommended reading a lot and writing a lot. However, not all knowledge worker career paths benefit from that kind of structured, pre-professional training and accreditation.
As we've noted before, the X-factor for knowledge work is that it is dependent on an individual's ability to tap their experience and their expertise in context-dependent ways while problem solving. That sort of professional skill set can't be easily structured and automated. Acquiring the kind of experience and skill that allows a knowledge worker to produce valuable work takes time and practice.
We know a lot about how agentic AI will change workflow. What we all need to learn more about is how humans can keep getting opportunities to acquire the expertise that comes from doing something early and often until they can do it well. Perhaps that's something to ask all those agentic AI tools.
About the Author
You May Also Like
