AI bullshit bingo is everywhere, but this article is really about leadership and management in the age of AI, not AI itself.
AI is everywhere. Really? I’m not so sure. What I am sure of is that everybody talks about AI, and most people use AI.
Yes, AI has the potential to disrupt everything – just like the industrial revolution did 200 years ago; possibly even more so.
So is this article about AI? No, it’s not. It’s about leadership and management in the age of AI.
With all the high-flying stuff that has already been written about AI and the wonders it works, let’s touch ground again and look at some good and bad examples from everyday work.
Nonsense Usage of AI
Write Emails with AI
Recently, I overheard a conversation between some colleagues who discussed the different AI tools they use to write their daily business emails. Which tool writes longer, more polished emails? Which tool writes more professional emails?
Seriously guys. Why does everyone prefer to write emails rather than to talk to each other? Don’t find excuses; the conversation I overheard is living proof that you can talk to each other. So stop the AI-assisted email orgy, get out of your chair, and go see people to solve problems together.
Meeting Listeners
On another occasion, I participated in an online meeting with some business partners where I observed a participant who didn’t have a face or a name: A meeting listener who recorded everything that was said in the call and transformed the voice into written meeting minutes.
Immediately after the call ended, I received an email with the transcript of the entire conversation. Word by word.
Hey, I’ve been on the call for an hour, and I didn’t read the news during the call. I actively participated, so I don’t need a full transcript. Furthermore, word-by-word transcripts might lead to misunderstandings if those email transcripts are forwarded. You can read my view on AI-generated email in the section just above.
Create Code Without Being A Coder
With the recent emergence of Vibe Coding, all the LinkedIn posts on the topic suggest that anybody can build software and apps. No coding skills required, no technical skills needed.
Yes, you can build a website or an AI wrapper application with Vibe Coding tools. But no, you cannot build secure and scalable software for productive use with Vibe Coding.
And never forget that a “business” based on a cheap AI wrapper created with a Vibe Coding tool can be wiped out at any time by the next release of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
Productive Usage of AI
Where there is shadow, there is light. AI is not nonsense per se; it’s nonsense in some cases and productive in others. Just like a hammer: Just because you have a hammer, not every problem is a nail.
Data Format Conversions
With all the tools we use today, our data comes in many different formats. The person who invented copy-paste deserves a Nobel Prize, but with this innovation came data formatting problems. Have you tried to copy a bullet list in markdown format and paste it as a bullet point list into Hubspot? It’s tedious, as the formats aren’t compatible and need to be corrected manually.
This is just one example of format copy-paste problems that waste time and human attention; there are thousands of others. You can solve them if you expand your copy-paste workflow into copy-AI-paste.
The same is true for converting PDF files into HTML, converting screenshots of tables into Microsoft Word tables, and many similar everyday tasks. In this domain, AI has saved me hundreds of hours.
Grammar, Spelling, Translations
Tools like Grammarly and Deepl have not just made my life more efficient, but my writing better. Because I don’t have to search for the right word in a foreign language or find typos manually anymore, I can spend more time on the human edge of writing: Outlining my thoughts in clarity for the target audience of my writing. That’s the essence of writing – no matter if you write an email, an article, a speech, or even a book.
Spot Configuration Problems
In tech, problems are invisible. At Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, sometimes our customers report bugs that aren’t bugs. Usually, it’s a configuration mismatch due to some IT security restrictions on the customer’s side. AI is awesome at comparing customer configurations to standard configurations and getting advice on how to mitigate configuration problems.
Vibe Coding
Vibe Coding isn’t as bad as I portrayed it above. I often use it to build functional prototypes instead of click dummies or boring product stories in bullet point format. Because you can interact with a vibe coding prototype through a prompt, visual elements and flows can be corrected right during the review discussions.
But never forget that you can’t put functional prototypes into production without passing them through your dev team and QA first.
Conclusion
Even in a world dominated by AI, the essence of management and leadership is interacting with people and different perspectives. AI can’t read the room, and AI can’t connect the dots between apparently unrelated perspectives.
