At the start of this week, I couldn’t believe my ears as I was listening to the news bulletin on the radio. I heard myself saying, “How on earth could that be allowed?” The issue was that our High Streets are getting busy with unqualified people offering ultrasound scans to diagnose illness and support pregnant mums. Today is “World Radiography Day”, so you can see why the issue has been highlighted. Until I heard the news item, I had no idea that all you need is the cash to buy an ultrasound machine and you can set up a business offering a medical service. You might think the law prevents this, but it does not. In response to the news, our lawmakers in Government merely said that if anyone has any ideas on how to deal with this, then let them know. You would think that our leaders would have already addressed this issue or rectified it immediately.
Clearly, that’s not the case. Neither is it the case for our prison service. Every day in the UK, people are being released from jail when they should be kept behind bars. Apparently, the Government is “more than embarrassed” about the situation. No kidding…! Meanwhile, all I hear on radio phone-ins are people asking, “They are our leaders, so why are they not fixing it?”
Meanwhile, in offices up and down the country, employees are asking the same questions about their bosses. Indeed, I haven’t worked in any organisation where the staff don’t wonder what the leaders are up to. Partly, this could be because, according to the Chartered Management Institute, 82% of leaders end up on the job “by accident”. They have no formal training in managing others, and over half of our bosses in Britain lack relevant qualifications for their roles. In other words, rather like those High Street ultrasound clinics, our companies are being run by amateurs. Is it any wonder we get frustrated and annoyed with business leaders?
This is shown in the debates that rage about “RTO” – the current fad for “Return To Office”. Business leaders worldwide appear to believe, against the prevailing evidence, that people who work from home are lazy and unproductive. However, as the MIT Sloan Management Review recently said, “Hybrid Work Is Not the Problem — Poor Leadership Is”. The authors argue that leaders are “fixated on the wrong problem”. And I would hazard a guess you’ve said similar things about some of your bosses.
Now, don’t get me wrong, leadership and management are not easy. It is tough being a boss. You have to balance conflicting needs and desires. You are working for two “bosses” yourself – the employees and the shareholders. And that’s before you have to consider the competing requirements of your customers. A leader feels themselves being pushed and pulled in every direction. They are only human, and so they react to this emotionally, often making poor decisions as a result.
So, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we could replace this flawed human decision-making that leads our businesses with a machine? Thankfully, due to artificial intelligence, this may not be as stupid as it sounds. Indeed, researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have put this to the test. They wanted to know if an “AI Board” could outperform a real one. In their article about their research in the Harvard Business Review, you can discover that artificial intelligence is the clear winner.
The research found that human leaders often “hesitated and circled around options without landing on a clear strategy.” However, their AI equivalents “reached clear, actionable resolutions”. This is not really a surprise. Indeed, CEOs themselves realise this. In a recent poll of 500 chief executives, the vast majority stated that AI could deliver better advice than a human board member. Even without the research from Wharton, leaders are beginning to realise that artificial intelligence is an essential tool in running the business from the top. While some argue AI lacks empathy, rational, unemotional decision-making might be precisely what businesses, and even public services, require.
Just imagine what would happen if your organisation had an “AI Board”. There would be clear decisions, unfettered by emotions and personal ambitions. AI would also more easily identify gaps and issues that require attention, as well as provide solutions. If we had AI leading our health regulation system, for instance, those unqualified ultrasound clinics would not have been able to operate. Plus, there’s a good chance the prison escapes would have been avoided as well.
Most of us are using artificial intelligence to support the work we do. This latest research, though, suggests we need to take a different approach. Rather than supporting our organisation, perhaps we should be using AI to run our businesses, rather than using those unqualified accidental managers. Ultimately, AI won’t replace good leadership, but it will make poor leadership painfully obvious. The problem is that there is a lot of poor leadership around.
