Welcome to week two of a five-week series on “Humanizing Work”.
Last week (“Grounding the Hunt”), we discussed how to approach your first job search in the AI era: how it’s important to be yourself, to have a support system, and to stay on balance, all while playing the long game. But now you have an offer and you’re looking forward to starting work and getting those loans paid.
Congratulations are in order, but that was just the beginning.
You're starting out in a disrupted world.
What do you do now?
Say Aye to AI. If your job is in AI development or deployment, you’ll be plenty busy working with AI. If your job is insulated from AI displacement, you’ll be plenty busy not working with AI.
Everyone else needs to start figuring out where and how genAI fits into the bigger picture. Anything that involves reading, listening, summarizing, content creation, research, analysis or that is otherwise knowledge-based has been disrupted by AI.
Anticipating, and adjusting to, that change is critical. Your goal is to figure out how to use AI creatively - but responsibly. Your awareness of its shortcomings is a precondition to incorporating it into your workflows.
Equally, try to understand how your colleagues use it in their workflows, so you can devise combined workflows. This is an exciting challenge, so embrace it with intellectual curiosity, an open mind, and a sense of responsibility.
Prepare for Scarcity. Even so, whether your set up is in-office, remote or hybrid, using AI can make you less dependent on others for learning or information. This isn’t a necessarily a bad thing - if taken in moderation. What you don’t want is to un-network yourself, to be come de-coupled from the human dimension of the work experience.
Why? ChatGPT is the equivalent of a free good. It's cheap and everyone has access. It flatters you because it makes you feel smart, but it's the same kind of smart as winning the World Cup in a video game. Everyone else has done it. In the future, it is human-centric work, and human-centric organizations, that will be the scarce resource. There is only one me, only one you, only one us. What can this uniqueness contribute?
So get to know people - personally. Approach conversations with humility and the spirit of learning. Include the person who hasn’t spoken. Repeat back a differing opinion to acknowledge it fully. Treat everyone with respect, give them your attention, let them know you see them and they matter. Recognize others’ differences as strengths. Say please often, and say thank you even more.
Doing the stuff that would make grandma proud unlocks a lot: context, experience, perspective, access, knowledge, reciprocity. Learn others' skills, and pain points. Take on the problems your enterprise faces. By all means, use AI, but do it together.
Manage Your Manager. It’s going to be a bit of a crapshoot whether you get a great manager. People who manage entry-level employees are often new to it, which means you are the guinea pig. Rather than viewing that as a negative, think of it as a chance to learn how to be a great manager yourself. Here are some things you can try.
Be proactive in scheduling catch-ups, ideally weekly or biweekly. But in doing so, treat his or her time as valuable, just as you would want someone to treat yours.
To do this, come prepared, with a written agenda broken down by topics and themes. I bring printouts of materials I want my manager to read, and examples of good work product produced by my team. My goal is to make it easy for him to help me, by providing clear problem statements of challenges I face, crisp summaries of solutions I’ve implemented, and status updates on complex problems. Don’t complain, explain.
Tip: prompt Microsoft Copilot to “review my emails, chats and documents I have worked on to create a summary of achievements this past week. Highlight obstacles and key open items. Identify high impact contributors.”
When I have an ask, I am direct about what I need and why I am asking for help. Playing games, spreading gossip and similar behavior is toxic and you will ruin your reputation as a reliable co-worker.
Be sure to praise peers and colleagues, promoting a culture where everyone works together well. But I’m not afraid to highlight points of friction so we don’t waste time hiding from the truth.
Credibility is paramount. Be honest. Don’t overstate. Take accountability.
Pigeonholing. One of the biggest risks starting out is ending up in a narrow, niche function where you develop skills with limited transferability. In an AI world, where tasks are atomized, and people are not taught to think critically, the risk of this will rise.
Other than being keen to the risk, try to excel in your work. This is the key to everything. Doing excellent work makes it easier to ask to diversify what you do. It also increases the odds of an internal transfer, because nobody wants to inherit someone else’s underperforming and disgruntled team member.
If an internal transfer isn’t on the cards, you may need to look outside. Excellent work will help once again. How you explain what you do and how you do it will make it obvious to your prospective next employer why they should poach you.
The G Word. You’re going to see this come up over and over again, but be generous. With your time. With your praise. With your knowledge. With your effort. With information. With your network. Your giving will attract takers, and other givers. Be wary of the takers, but in my experience eventually everyone figures them out and they move on.
An enterprise made up of generous givers is your competitors’ worst nightmare.
Grace and peace, J
Next week: Navigating the mid-career journey.
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Thank you, Justin. Another great article!