Only 1% of top managers are ready to replace themselves with artificial intelligence

The manager of the future should equally pay attention to process automation, but also develop empathy and emotional intelligence, experts of the Association of Managers and the Higher School of Economics concluded

What happened

• Two-thirds of top managers in our country plan to transfer part of their current routine and analytical tasks to artificial intelligence in the next five years. This follows from a study conducted by the Association of Managers in conjunction with the Center for Scientific and Technological Forecasting of the ISSEK NRU HSE (available). At the same time, only 1% of managers are ready to completely replace themselves with robots.
• The annual study of over 1 top managers from more than 180 large and medium-sized Russian companies was held in the summer of 2021 under the leadership of the Association of Managers and Alexander Chulok, Director of the HSE ISSEK Center for Scientific and Technological Forecasting, and is dedicated to identifying key skills for successful work of managers.
• The results of the study were presented at a foresight session on the Future of Management Professions, where the participating top managers identified the factor of “humanity” as increasingly important both for managers themselves and for making hiring decisions. Almost a third of the recruiting companies participating in the study already pay attention to the applicant’s participation in volunteer projects as an advantage.
• Recall that according to the results of last year’s survey In the first place among the key skills of a manager was the ability to see opportunities in a complex, uncertain environment. On the second – emotional intelligence associated with the ability to recognize the emotions and motivation of employees.

What does it mean

According to the authors of the study and participants in the foresight session, a successful leader should pay attention to the following few trends in the coming years.

• Loss of jobs, automation. Part of the functional responsibilities, primarily routine and analytical, will be taken over by AI-based services in the next five years – this is the consensus among top management.
• Empathy. Simultaneously with the automation of processes, there is a reverse trend: the behavioral, personal characteristics of a manager, such as compassion, readiness to meet employees halfway, to “enter into the situation” of each person, come to the fore. This trend is a manifestation of a larger trend towards ESG principles, which is now being actively discussed in the world and in our country.
• Volunteering Closely related to the previous point, but still a separate topic is charity and volunteering. If a company pays attention to a similar experience of an applicant, it means that it considers it part of its own value system.