🎮 The Next Input — Issue #205

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⚡ The Briefing — 60 sec

• Workers face the brutal reality of AI-driven job losses The brutal reality of the changing landscape. My heart goes out to those affected. It is easy to talk about productivity, leverage and transformation from a distance. It is much harder when the disruption has a name, a mortgage and a family attached to it.

• SpaceX has bought $329m worth of Tesla Megapacks this year Circular economy much? Elon selling energy infrastructure to Elon to power Elon’s other company. At some point the org chart is going to become a Möbius strip.

• Razer and NUS launch joint AI lab for gaming The gamer in me loves this. Gaming has always been one of the best places to test new interfaces, adaptive systems and weird AI ideas before they quietly spread everywhere else.

🛠️ The Playbook — AI Workforce Transition Map

Mission
Identify which roles and workflows are most exposed to AI, then redesign work before disruption turns into emergency restructuring.

Difficulty
Advanced

Build time
4–6 hours

ROI
Improves workforce planning, protects institutional knowledge and converts AI productivity gains into deliberate operating changes rather than reactive cuts.

0) Why This Matters

AI workforce disruption is no longer theoretical.

Some organisations are already reducing headcount. Others are consolidating roles, changing hiring plans or expecting smaller teams to produce significantly more.

The dangerous response is to wait until finance demands cuts and then ask AI to justify them.

A better approach is to understand:

• which tasks are changing

• which roles are exposed

• which skills become more valuable

• where productivity gains are real

• where human judgement remains essential

• what knowledge would disappear if people left

The goal is not to preserve every workflow forever.

It is to redesign work without pretending employees are interchangeable line items.

1) Architecture

2) Workflow

1. Select one function and document the actual work performed—not merely the official job descriptions.

2. Break each role into recurring tasks, decisions, relationships and knowledge dependencies.

3. Classify each activity as automate, augment, retain, redesign or retire.

4. Model several scenarios, including productivity gains, retraining, redeployment and role consolidation.

5. Capture critical knowledge before responsibilities or headcount change.

6. Create a transition plan with named owners, measurable outcomes and clear communication.

3) Example Prompts

Role Exposure Assessment

You are an AI workforce transformation analyst.

Review the following role and its actual weekly activities.

Classify each activity as:
- automate
- augment
- retain as human-led
- redesign
- retire

For each activity, assess:
1. time currently required
2. AI suitability
3. quality risk
4. required human judgement
5. knowledge dependency
6. likely future skill requirement

Do not assume that technical feasibility automatically justifies workforce reduction.

Institutional Knowledge Risk

Review the following team structure and proposed role changes.

Identify:
- undocumented expertise
- client or stakeholder relationships
- single points of failure
- historical decisions known by only one person
- manual workarounds
- compliance or safety knowledge
- knowledge that must be captured before transition

Return a prioritised knowledge-retention plan.

Transition Scenario Brief

Create three workforce transition scenarios for the following function:

[FUNCTION]

Scenario 1:
AI augmentation with no headcount reduction.

Scenario 2:
Role redesign and internal redeployment.

Scenario 3:
Role consolidation after proven productivity gains.

For each scenario, provide:
- expected benefits
- operational risks
- employee impact
- implementation cost
- knowledge-retention requirements
- governance concerns
- 12-month outcome metrics

4) Guardrails

• Analyse tasks before making conclusions about whole roles.

• Do not use AI-generated assessments as the sole basis for employment decisions.

• Preserve critical knowledge before restructuring.

• Include retraining and redeployment scenarios alongside cost reduction.

• Test productivity gains before changing workforce assumptions.

• Be transparent about the purpose and limits of the analysis.

• Include affected employees in workflow discovery where practical.

• Require executive accountability for final workforce decisions.

5) Pilot Rollout — 3 hours

1. Choose one team experiencing clear AI-related workflow change.

2. Interview two employees and map their real weekly activities.

3. Classify ten tasks across automation, augmentation and human ownership.

4. Estimate time savings and identify critical knowledge dependencies.

5. Create one no-reduction scenario and one role-redesign scenario.

6. Present the findings with risks, assumptions and required next steps.

6) Metrics

• Percentage of roles mapped at task level

• Hours of repetitive work identified

• Proven time savings versus estimated savings

• Employees retrained or redeployed

• Critical knowledge captured before transition

• Workflow error rate after redesign

• Employee sentiment and trust

• Productivity per full-time employee

• Customer or stakeholder impact

• Workforce decisions reversed due to poor assumptions

Pro Tip: Do not begin with “Which jobs can AI replace?” Begin with “What work is changing, and what would we be stupid to lose?”

🎯 The Arsenal — Tools & Platforms

• Miro · maps real workflows, decisions and knowledge dependencies · Link

• Airtable · maintains role, task, skill and transition records · Link

• Azure AI Search · preserves and retrieves institutional knowledge · Link

• Power BI · models workforce scenarios and operational impacts · Link

• Microsoft Teams Approvals · records accountable transition decisions · Link

Copy-paste prompt block:

You are an AI workforce transition architect.

Assess the following business function:

Function:
[DESCRIPTION]

Roles:
[LIST]

Recurring workflows:
[LIST]

Known AI tools:
[LIST]

Current business pressures:
[LIST]

Critical knowledge and relationships:
[LIST]

Design a transition plan that:
- maps work at task level
- distinguishes automation from augmentation
- identifies skills likely to rise or decline in value
- models retraining and redeployment options
- protects institutional knowledge
- tests productivity assumptions before structural changes
- includes human review and accountable decision-making
- measures employee, operational and customer impact

Return:
1. task exposure matrix
2. role redesign recommendations
3. knowledge-retention plan
4. three workforce scenarios
5. governance framework
6. communication plan
7. 90-day pilot
8. operational metrics

💡 Free Office Hours

AI transformation has real human consequences. The organisations that handle it well will combine commercial discipline with careful workflow analysis, knowledge retention and honest communication—not discover their people strategy inside a spreadsheet five minutes before a board meeting.

Book here: https://calendly.com

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🕹️ Game Over

AI may power the rockets, the batteries and the next generation of games.

The harder system to redesign is still the organisation full of humans.

— Aaron Automating the boring. Amplifying the brilliant.

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