You can also access this resource, and many others, in Issue 366 of my Talent Edge Weekly newsletter.
This new, 33-minute podcast episode is the first of a four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, with this episode focused on talent management. Host Adi Ignatius interviews Paula Goldman, Salesforce’s Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer and author of Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human-AI Collaboration at Work. They discuss entry-level hiring, internal mobility, coaching, and performance evaluation. I want to highlight work redesign. Goldman describes how a division within Salesforce’s HR team uses AI with business units to map tasks to skills, identify changing work and where human capabilities are becoming more important, and redesign roles. From my standpoint, mapping tasks to skills can help identify where AI, people, or both can perform work most effectively. Mapping every task can become unwieldy, especially without the technology, data, and capacity to maintain that level of detail. It might be more practical to start at the activity level (a step in a process, such as processing a customer refund), rather than cataloging every task within it (a specific action, such as checking the purchase record against the refund policy), and go into more detail where needed. Another factor often overlooked is decision rights: even if AI checks whether a refund qualifies, who has authority to approve it? I shared a post last week on an MIT CISR framework that considers ambiguity and risk in those decisions. Talent Edge Circle members can also watch the replay of our recent discussion on AI’s impact on organization design.
