“CEOs are hugely expensive. Why not automate them?” asked Will Dunn last May.
There’s An AI For That, a website that launched in December 2022, suggests something similar. According to them, the impact of AI on the Chief Executive role is 91%, breaking the tasks down as follows:
Team management: 90% impact
Performance reviews: 75% impact
Startup ideas: 40% impact
Pitch decks: 40% impact
Meeting summaries: 40% impact
…and so on.
Obviously drafting meeting summaries isn’t really the CEO’s job, and startup ideas and pitch decks are only relevant to a certain kind of company. But let’s focus instead on the core proposition: that the bulk of the CEO’s work can be automated.
Reader, it cannot.
Let’s take the first item: team management. The sub-tasks that AI has automated include “task and software productivity insights,” “collab process design,” “engineering leadership growth solution,” “increased team productivity and efficiency,” etc.
None of this is team management.
These things help you manage information. Process. Data. They do not help you manage people.
In order to manage people, first you must understand people. And not in a generalized, abstract sense, but in an individual sense. What does this person need to perform at their very best? What does this person need to thrive?
Once you understand that, you must understand the team. How do these individuals come together to achieve something greater as a collective than what they can do on their own?
That is the CEO’s job.
There’s a show on Netflix called The Playbook: A Coach’s Rules for Life. One of the episodes features renowned football (i.e., soccer) coach José Mourinho, considered one of the greatest coaches of all time. Mourinho notes, “It's very important for a coach to understand, you are not going to teach them how to play football. You are not going to teach Ronaldo how to take a free kick. You are not going to teach Ibra
how to hold a ball on his chest. You are not going to teach Drogba how to attack the first post and score in the air. You are going to teach them how to play football in that team.”
This is the job of the CEO. To understand the Ronaldos on your team. To understand the Ibras on your team. To understand the Drogbas on your team. And to understand how to get them to play together to achieve something extraordinary.
AI isn’t close to doing that.
If you are a CEO and you think your job is “collab process design,” your problem isn’t the risk of automation, your problem is that you don’t understand your job.
AI can help with brainstorming, data analysis, process building.
It cannot help you know whether you’re doing the right things.
It cannot help you know whether the things you’re doing are working.
It cannot help you understand whether the problem is one of strategy, capability, leadership, or something else.
Most of all, it cannot be accountable.
Please know, I’m not advocating for CEO salaries that are thousands of times greater than the median employee salary. That kind of inequity is preposterous and unconscionable and should not stand.
But the mere fact that it’s expensive doesn’t mean it can be addressed through automation. The true job of a CEO is to be present. To be insightful. To be empathetic. To understand. To be bold when necessary and humble always.
In other words, to be human. Sorry, AI. Not yet.
Ngā mihi maioha / warm regards,
Kaila
