I struggle mightily to describe the collaborative nature being lost with “AI” assisted thinking partners. When I try to articulate it in person, the response ends up miles away from what I intended to discuss. Someday I hope to get closer to the heart of this topic.
For now I’ll try this:
I want to brainstorm ideas with other design and product leaders. I want to intellectually spar through my plans and approaches with them. I want to rehearse my reasoning for presentations with them. It’s not that “AI” tools can’t help me do these things or that I don’t know how to use them. It’s that doing it together is the whole point. Not only for me, but for everyone involved.
A critique — what I’ll call this collection of group enabled thinking activities — isn’t a one way street. The person receiving the critique isn’t the only one learning. The person providing the critique is learning as much, if not more. Everyone is exploring and making trade-offs during these critiques together. They’re growing together.
It’s not learning in the abstract or through rote exercise or through generic to-do lists. Everything is in context to local consequences and trade-offs based on existing constraints.
The most potent possible learning environment — by far! — appears to be where businesses are encouraging their employees to isolate themselves.
Madness.
I should be able to ask people to brainstorm, spar, and rehearse ideas without feeling as though I’m wasting their time. I’ve worked at places with generous yearly conference budgets and monthly stipends for ongoing learning I couldn’t spend fast enough. Yet, I would feel awkward asking colleagues to intellectually explore my environment and goals.
What a waste.
Doing these things together is how we collectively build team norms, establish shared values, and disseminate new skills. Every time someone brainstorms, spars, and rehearses ideas in isolation, I see it as a missed opportunity at best and, more commonly, as destructive lone-wolf behavior. Every time someone tries to define norms, values, and skills outside a shared group context I see someone retreating to their ivory-tower.
Using “AI” tools as a thinking partner is a great tactic to excel in a socially deprived work environment. It can sharpen your thinking and help you reach a more durable plan faster without interrupting your peers. But, I’d argue, it’s a coping mechanism for surviving inside an isolating and counterproductive system.
If you were to ask for help untangling a gnarly idea or approach with a peer and their response is frustration, they are either inside an environment that doesn’t leave room for shared growth or they are assholes. Both can be true, but I’ve always found it far more effective to concentrate on the environment no matter who is involved.
As a leader, improving your team’s environment is your job. Time spent encouraging, coaching, or demanding individuals learning alone to cope inside your dysfunctional environment is an abdication of responsibility and a dereliction of duty.
If someone on your team thinks they will impress you and be rewarded by using “AI” as a thinking partner to avoid group work, you’re part of the problem. You’re making it harder, bit by bit, to build an environment where people can learn from each other without feeling insecure.
Because, and I cringe feeling that I have to explicitly say this, the best teachers for you at any given time is likely the people next to you on the org chart. Not your boss. Not a notable industry expert. Not your computer. Your peers.
And, in a healthy environment, your peers are excited to brainstorm, spar, and rehearse with you!
But we’re all, now more than ever, terrified to talk to each other.
Now that’s leadership! 1
1 A sickening level of sarcasm.
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