Hi Reader,

When your role is changing, you cannot just push through. But a lot of managers are telling their teams that it will get better; just keep going. This is still the old paradigm, from when change was a project with a beginning and an end. With AI, change is constant. It will not go away, and you cannot push through it. You need to redesign the way your team works.

Three ways AI changes the work

AI changes the way we work, and it does it in three different ways.

The first is doing more of the same. You create more content, more slides, more leads, faster. This is the most common one. People usually say it’s what AI does for them. Sometimes it also means finally getting to the tasks you never had time for.

The second is getting time back. AI takes over part of the work, and you choose what to do with the hours it frees up. I rarely see this happen. When it does, it can be powerful, like using this time for strategic thinking.

The third is redesigning the work. The title stays the same and the outcome stays the same, but what you do every day changes.

Most jobs have a mix of all three. You might do more of the same in one part of your role, get time back in another, and see a third part redesigned completely. And the third part is where people either thrive or burn out.

At Workday, the instructional design team used to create learning content. When AI started producing content, they could have just made more of it. Instead, they moved into internal consulting. They talk to managers and find out what’s working, what isn’t, and what people need. The role changed, and they feel good about it. (You can listen to, watch or read the full story in my Built by People Leaders episode with Greta Stahl, VP of Organizational Learning and Development at Workday.)

Now take a team of senior engineers. They used to write code. Now AI agents write it, and the engineers review it. They have the same title and the same skills, and the output is still lines of code. But they went from building to auditing, and the work that used to give them energy now drains them.

The Energy Shift Check

This check uses the GC Index, which measures five kinds of energy for impact. Game Changers generate new ideas. Strategists turn ideas into a plan. Implementers get things done. Polishers make things better. Play Makers connect people.

For any role AI is redesigning, run three checks.

1. Name what the role used to need. Look at the work before AI and ask which energy it ran on. The instructional designers were most likely Implementers and Polishers: they made things, then made them better. The senior engineers probably had Game Changer, Implementer and Strategist energy. They built something new and needed the big picture to see where it fit.

Why it matters: people chose these roles, and stayed in them, because of that energy. That’s what’s at risk.

2. Name what it needs now. Describe the new day-to-day and match it to an energy. The instructional designers now need Strategist and Play Maker energy for consulting, connecting people and seeing the bigger picture. The engineers now spend their days as Polishers, reviewing and correcting.

Why it matters: the job description might have some minor changes, but the role now requires a completely different energy. If you only look at the title, you’ll miss it.

3. Check the cost. Look at who’s in the role and ask whether the new energy is one they have. We’re intelligent human beings, and we can learn anything. The question is at what cost. Stretching into a different energy for one project is OK. Doing it every day drains people, and pushing through won’t change that.

AI changes not just how you do your job but also how your job impacts you.

We talked about all of this at the Beyond AI Adoption: Redesigning Work for Human Impact webinar last Thursday. You can watch the full webinar here: