The other side of the AI-powered coin

I come to work. I sit down at my computer and talk to it. I go for lunch, where I say nothing (we are remote-first, the office is usually empty). I come back and talk to my computer again.

That is what an ordinary day in an AI-powered company looks like. I get more done than ever before. And last week I did not feel like going to work.

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What nobody posts on LinkedIn

On social media and at conferences you read how companies map their processes, build second brains, deploy agents and set up a company GitHub. Occasionally word gets out that someone hired a Chief AI Officer. Occasionally that someone made people redundant. Because of AI, or with AI as the pretext.

Nobody writes about what it does to the people who stayed.

We have been building an AI-powered company for a year and a half. The productivity I wrote about in August is real. This is the other side of that coin. Three things happened quietly here:

1️⃣ Excitement turned into routine.

The first agent, the first skill, the terminal, GitHub. For six months we learned something new every day and we enjoyed it. Then it became routine, as everything does. Except routine with AI is a particularly quiet one. You talk all day, but not to a person.

2️⃣ Performance isolates.

Everyone can do more on their own. The marketer takes on part of the designer's work, the designer part of the marketer's. Great for the company. Except there are fewer reasons to meet. Nobody shut themselves off on purpose. There were simply fewer reasons to interact.

3️⃣ Numbers crowded out every other topic.

When everything can be measured, when you have context and data for everything and the dashboard generates itself, people talk about numbers. How many sign-ups, how many people in a training, how many books sold. It matters, otherwise we do not eat. But somewhere along the way we stopped talking about anything else.

What gives us the most energy today are the moments AI did not speed up. A workshop with a client. A good project call. A training group that catches fire. Not the outputs. Those are finished faster than ever. And we take less joy in them.

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Nobody has this finished

It does not matter whether you call it AI-first or AI-powered. Almost everyone is attempting some variation on the theme right now. And nobody has it finished. At the pace technology is changing, it will not be finished a year from now either.

A company that focuses only on technology, processes and lifeless things will get slapped sooner or later. Because the people will not stay.

The question is whether you care about the environment you work in. I do. Nobody carries a change like that alone. I need people to join in. Which means I must not push them to the back of the queue.

For a year and a half we have been working out how to change our structure, infrastructure and processes so AI agents can work well with us. The same question applies to people: how to change the structure, the culture, the processes and the rituals so that those who build it with us want to keep building. And actually want to work in a company like that.

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What we are doing about it so far

We have training in coaching and leadership – working with emotions, nonviolent communication, conflict resolution, active listening practice, regular one-to-ones, one week every two months devoted purely to internal matters, team topics… It is actually a lot. The question is whether it is enough in an AI-powered world.

I have started to realise that what I enjoy about our AI Mornings (where we share what we have tried with AI) is not the news itself. It is that we are together.

It is quite possible this combination will not be enough and we will have to change it. This week we are on a company offsite in Pálava and this is one of the topics.

I think we already have the recipe for an AI-powered company. The recipe for an AI-powered company people enjoy working in still needs tuning.

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Webinar on 15 September

On Tuesday 15 September I will show you what House of Řezáč looks like from the inside. On one real project, from research through decisions and planning to the campaign and the product. One of the points we will go through is the company brain and the new boundaries of roles. What it did to the roles. And what it did to the people. This topic cannot be left out.

"The reason we are here is to get stuff done, that is the top priority."
– Jeff Bezos

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Weekend reading

Here’s one good thing about getting older

Plenty of things about getting older are hard. Some are better. Your inner calm grows with age.