AI does not arrive and eliminate roles. Across sectors where AI has moved from pilot to operational deployment, the pattern is consistent: AI changes what the role does — which tasks remain human, which become AI-assisted, and which transfer to automated execution.
Firms are spending on tools and neglecting the work design that creates value
- Organisations are investing heavily in AI tools and lightly in the work design question that determines whether those tools produce value. McKinsey's 2023 analysis of generative AI's impact on knowledge work identifies the shift: AI takes over repeatable, structured, pattern-matching components, leaving humans with tasks requiring judgment, context, relationship, and exception-handling.
- When the organisation does not redesign the role around what AI has changed, the worker is left managing both the old role and the new one simultaneously — exhausting, error-prone, and producing far less value than either AI or human could generate in a properly configured work arrangement.
Treat the role redesign as a deliberate design discipline, not an afterthought
Identify one team currently in the early phase of AI tool adoption. Before the next adoption milestone, schedule a structured work-design session. The agenda is not "how do we use the tool better" — it is "what does each person do differently now that the tool handles X, and what do they need to do that well?" D5 makes this a design discipline: the technology is a variable in a work-design equation, not the answer to it. The answer is the design.
