Dear Madeleine,
I lead a team that is responsible for content marketing for a consulting and research firm. After a lull the company started growing rapidly, and I now have a large cohort of bright recent grads. We hire graduates from top universities, and a gig with us is often seen as an ideal path to business school or other advanced degree programs.
Part of this group’s job includes conducting research for some of the consulting teams. All the younger people are very comfortable with using AI, and it is causing a real headache. At first I was thrilled with how fast they were working compared with some of my longer-term employees. I reviewed their decks, which were well built and cogent. But soon the complaints started trickling in and now they have grown into a raging river.
It turns out that, unbeknownst to me, the new people use AI almost exclusively despite our very expensive subscriptions to multiple reputable research sites, and they can’t tell truth from fiction. Some of the work they have submitted has conflicting facts. Although I didn’t catch these, the consultants are experts in their fields and knew what to look for. I feel like a fool for not anticipating this problem—but, more to the point, I am not sure what to do about it.
Are other people dealing with this endless flow of garbage? How are companies handling this?
AI Bah Humbug
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Dear AI Bah Humbug,
I had read about how schools are creatively addressing the problem of students using AI to write their papers, but I haven’t heard of leaders in companies needing to tackle the issue. This doesn’t mean you are alone.
Everywhere I look, I hear about how AI is coming for our jobs. At Blanchard we take the threat—and the opportunity—very seriously. We have dealt with it at our company by adopting the stance that AI is a useful tool to augment, not replace, what humans can bring to the table. I suspect other companies like yours, that can benefit from the use of AI, are doing what we are doing:
- Providing role-specific onboarding for internal and client-facing employees to outline what is and is not acceptable use of AI
- Demonstrating proper use of ethical, credible, and effective use of AI with case examples and scenario playbooks
- Requiring ongoing training and upskilling to support employees as AI becomes smarter
You can read more about our point of view on the best practices around AI in our e-book Leading with Humanity in the Age of AI. It is specific to our industry, but there might be some useful tips for you.
I imagine you’ve always had to provide strong direction to your new hires and may have been lulled into a high level of confidence by the apparent speed and skill of this new crop of grads. But now you know their skills are not quite what they seemed.
You will probably have to go back to square one with this group and explain that they cannot rely on AI. Show them how to fact-check and ensure that the materials your consultants need to do their jobs are 100% reliable. Teach them how to use tools that you know can be trusted. You could probably use AI to help you create a training syllabus. (I was kind of kidding, but I realize as I type this that you actually could.)
You might consider leveraging what the new people know by having them show you and some of your longer-term team members how to use AI to take work out of the system. Just because relying 100% on AI is a problem doesn’t mean you should let the revolution pass you by.
The change in how we all work as AI seeps into everything we do is moving fast and speeding up. Learning as an organization how to use it well (and how not to use it) will help everyone.
Love, Madeleine
About Madeleine
Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services as well as a key facilitator of Blanchard’s Leadership Coach Certification course. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.
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