The Role Evolution Engine.
Redesign the role on purpose, before events redesign it for you.
The Creator's Journey · Chapter XIII, Becoming Super
What happens to a person’s role as AI takes on more of its tasks? Most leaders approach that question defensively. They try to protect the role as it is. The Role Evolution Engine, which grew out of Dr. Zdenka Cumano’s research, does the opposite. It helps a leader redesign the role on purpose, before events redesign it for them.
The process is simple. Describe a role in detail: its tasks, its decisions, its relationships and how its time is actually spent. Then sort the work into three columns.
- Absorbed
- Tasks machines will largely take in the next year or two.
- Assisted
- Tasks done faster and better by a person working with a machine.
- Grown
- Work that expands because the person now has time and leverage they did not have before.
Then sketch what the role becomes when the absorbed work is gone and the growing work fills the space.
The engine did not shrink my role. It showed me the role I had been too busy to have.
The focus of researchers, as well as managers and entrepreneurs, should be not (just) on automation, but on job redesign.
The first time I ran it on my own role, the result surprised me. Much of what filled my week was in the first column: the gathering, the summarizing, the first drafts. What remained and grew was the part I had always said I wanted more time for. Being with founders and leaders. Thinking about the long arc. Deciding.
Tasks, not jobs
Economists reached the same place from the data. Erik Brynjolfsson, Tom Mitchell and Daniel Rock studied which work tasks machine learning can do. They found that few, if any, jobs can be fully automated. Their conclusion was that the reengineering of processes and the reorganization of tasks will matter more than full automation. The unit of change is the task. The role is what you design around it.
When a leader runs the engine with her team, something shifts in the room. The fear of replacement turns into a design problem. People stop defending their old job descriptions and start arguing about what their new ones should be.
Run it on yourself first
- List two weeks of workWrite every task that filled your last two weeks. Be literal.
- Sort into three columnsAbsorbed by machines, assisted by machines, grown by the time and leverage you gain.
- Write the new roleOne paragraph describing the role you will have when the first column is gone.
- Share it, then scale itShow it to someone who will tell you the truth. Then run the engine with one team.
Quick answers
What is the Role Evolution Engine?
A tool from AI Leader Edge, grown out of Dr. Zdenka Cumano’s research, that sorts a role’s tasks into absorbed, assisted and grown, then sketches the role that remains. Rob Frasca uses it to redesign roles on purpose, before events redesign them.
Will AI replace my job or change it?
Rob Frasca’s view is that AI absorbs tasks, and the role is redesigned around what remains and grows. Research by Brynjolfsson, Mitchell and Rock found that few, if any, jobs can be fully automated by machine learning.
Sources
- Rob Frasca, The Creator’s Journey (forthcoming), Chapter XIII, Becoming Super.
- Erik Brynjolfsson, Tom Mitchell and Daniel Rock, “What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy?” AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 108, 2018. Source