AI Is Starting to Pick Who Gets Laid Off

It starts, HR takes a step? ... 

AI Is Starting to Pick Who Gets Laid Off

By The Washington Post, February 21, 2023

The machine learning software that human resources managers use to analyze employment-related data points for recommendations of who to interview, hire, and promote, is likely dealing with a more daunting task: helping decide who gets cut, according to human resources analysts and workforce experts.

A January survey of 300 human resources leaders at U.S. companies revealed that 98 percent of them say software and algorithms will help them make layoff decisions this year. And as companies lay off large swaths of people — with cuts creeping into the five digits — it's hard for humans to execute alone.

Big firms often use software to find the "right person" for the "right project," according to Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School. These same tools can help in layoffs. "They suddenly are just being used differently," Fuller says.

From The Washington Post

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Japanese VR Piloted Robotics for Rail Productivity Management

Having had some amount of experience in the use and maintenance of rail-based equipment, can understand the usefulness and safety issues  involved here.

ACM TECHNEWS

Japanese Rail Company Rolls Out VR-Piloted Gundam Robot Worker  By New Atlas, April 29, 2022

The West Japan Rail Company, working with advanced robotics firm Human Machinery Co. and transportation infrastructure solutions provider Nippon Signal Co., has deployed a humanoid heavy equipment maintenance robot that is directed through virtual reality (VR).

The company said the robot is designed "to improve productivity and safety" by allowing workers to elevate and manipulate equipment around the rail system without risking electrocution or falls.  The robot's torso is mounted to a hydraulic crane arm, which rides around the system on a rail car, and drops stabilizing legs when in operation.

The operator wears motion-tracked VR goggles to control the movements of the unit’s head with stereo vision, and grips handles that direct the motions of the robot's arms and hands.

From New Atlas

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Informs Youtube Site

Was just informed that the Informs Group had a Youtube presence.

Worth a look, have now established a connection will be sharing: insight.   https://www.youtube.com/user/INFORMSonline/about

INFORMS — Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

Saving lives. Saving money. Solving problems.

www.informs.org/explore

Saving Lives.

Saving Money.

Solving Problems.

Operations Research & Analytics are proven scientific mathematical processes that enable organizations to turn complex challenges into substantial opportunities by transforming data into information, and information into insights that save lives, save money and solve problems. INFORMS is proud to be the professional home of members who are transforming our world. .... '

Database of World Management Practices

This came to my attention.   Could have been useful, depending on how precise the practices were detailed, in past modeling efforts.   This effort under way for 18 years! Now if we could have working process models of each organization type to work from.   Likely much harder.  But what if we could build up from basic models?  Forecast of future practices mentioned also of interest. Note offering measurement as well.  Has to be good data here. 

The World Management Survey at 18: Lessons and the Way Forward   by Daniela Scur, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, Renata Lemos, and Nicholas Bloom  in HBSWK

With a dataset of 13,000 firms and 4,000 schools and hospitals spanning more than 35 countries, the World Management Survey provides a systematic measure of management practices used in organizations. This paper gives an overview of lessons learned and a management policy toolkit for policymakers.

Author Abstract

Understanding how differences in management “best practices” affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics and public policy. The World Management Survey (WMS) project was born almost two decades ago with the main goal of developing a new systematic measure of management practices being used in organizations. The WMS has contributed to a body of knowledge around how managerial structures, not just managerial talent, relates to organizational performance. Over 18 years of research, a set of consistent patterns have emerged and spurred new questions. We will present a brief overview of what we have learned in terms of measuring and understanding management practices and condense the implications of these findings for policy. We end with an outline of what we see as the path forward for both research and policy implications of this research program. ... '

  Paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28524

Role of Design Leaders

McKinsey talks design.   Is design mostly strategically long range, or not?    Do you design your reactions to difficult times?

Are you asking enough from your design leaders?   By Melissa Dalrymple, Sam Pickover, and Benedict Sheppard  from McKinsey

Are you asking enough from your design leader?
Companies that excel at design grow revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry peers.1 So why aren’t more companies joining their ranks?

To answer the question, we interviewed 200 senior design leaders and 100 top executives and analyzed the answers of more than 1,700 respondents to the McKinsey Design Index (MDI) survey tool.2 What we found was striking: some 90 percent of companies weren’t reaching the full potential of design, even as, in the past five years, double the number of companies have added senior design roles to their organization.3

Of the four areas tied directly to improved revenue growth and shareholder return—which include design leadership, cross-functional talent, iterative processes, and end-to-end user experiences—CEOs must address design leadership first if their companies are to capture the full business value of design.4 Yet two problems exist, according to our research: a lack of clarity about where and how senior design leaders can contribute, and uncertainty about how much to expect of them in their role (Exhibit 1). To elevate the organization’s design ambition, and to clarify the leadership needed to deliver it, top executives must make three interconnected interventions:   .... '

Most Leadership Skills are Learned

I just started more regularly listening to the K@W Podcasts, nicely done, easily accessed today, for example they are readily available by voice command from Alexa and Google systems.   .....

Most leadership Skills are Learned

Former Aetna CEO Ron Williams draws on years of management experience to offer leadership advice in his new book.

As a longtime business executive, Ron Williams is often asked for advice on management issues. He likes to keep his answers clear and simple. One of his favorite mantras is, “Don’t get stuck in paralysis by analysis.” He also tells young people not to map every step of their careers because, like him, they never know where they may end up. Williams grew up in Chicago’s South Side, where he used to wash cars, and became one of the few African-Americans to lead a Fortune 500 company, serving as chairman and chief executive officer of Aetna. He’s on the board at American Express, Boeing and Johnson & Johnson, and also runs his consultancy, RW2 Enterprises. Williams shares his life lessons and experiences in a new book, Learning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading an Organization. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on Sirius XM to talk about why the best leaders keep an open mind and never stop learning from the people around them. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page).

An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

Knowledge@Wharton: I read that part of the reason why you wrote this book was because you have often been asked to talk about your upbringing and career, going from Chicago to CEO. ... "

Studies of Management by Algorithm

Is part of the process of what we deal with as we start to work more closely with robots and algorithms.   

What People Hate About Being Managed by Algorithms, According to a Study of Uber Drivers
by Mareike Möhlmann, Ola Henfridsson  in HBR

Companies are increasingly using algorithms to manage their remote workforces. Called “algorithmic management,” this approach has been most widely adopted in gig economy companies. For example, ride-hailing company Uber substantially increases its efficiency by managing some three million workers with an app that instructs drivers which passengers to pick up and which route to take.

Being managed in this way offers some benefit to self-employed workers as well: for example, Uber drivers are free to decide when and for how long they would like to work and which area they would like to serve. However, our research reveals that algorithmic management is also frustrating to workers, and their resentment can lead them to behave subversively with the potential to cause real harm to their companies. Our research also suggests some ways that companies can mitigate these concerns while still taking advantage of the benefits of management by algorithm. .... "

Managing the Managers

More insertion of AI into daily interactions and tasks.  Considering, when and how ... and how do you measure the uptake? 

The Robots That Manage the Managers    By The Wall Street Journal  (Will require registration)

The platforms are based on research showing periodic repetition and reminders are good ways to learn new material.

A new wave of artificial intelligence-driven coaching apps and platforms aim to provide new managers with training in traditional supervisory skills.

As millennials move into management positions, many find they lack even introductory training in traditional supervisory skills such as delivering feedback and delegating work.

A new wave of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven coaching apps and platforms aim to fill the gap, including Butterfly, Qstream, and LEADx.

The platforms are based on research showing periodic repetition and reminders are good ways to learn new material; they suit a generation of digital natives that prefer checking an app over sitting through a PowerPoint tutorial.

However, the apps' text and email reminders are easy to ignore, and it can be strange when a bot gets too personal.

The coaching programs use AI in various ways, typically by factoring a user's responses over time into the selection and timing of coaching tips.

For example, a user who has almost mastered material might be nudged to recall it less often than one who is being exposed to it for the first time. .... "

From The Wall Street Journal 

Silo Syndrome

Its really always about silos.  The silos are formed in part by the data that exists within them.  But also more fundamentally by the trust that exists within decision making.    I have trust within a silo that makes decisions that influences agreed-to goals.   How might further automation change this?

Five-Fifty  in Mckinsey:
A quick briefing in five—or a fifty-minute deeper dive

In this edition:The silo syndrome  Working in silos can cause tunnel vision, tribalism, and weak corporate performance. What’s a silo-buster to do?  ... "

Analytics for Management

Good piece in the ACM, full text linked to below. And further it is not only about classical analytics but also about the emergence of cognitive aspects of AI in this space.    These approaches are more closely connected to the actual decisions that managers make. And how those decisions link together into a decision process.   We are not completely there yet, but approaching.  Management decisions are always a sequence of decisions, by multiple people,  in context.  That's not expressed enough in the below.

Analytics for Managerial Work  By Vijay Khatri, Binny M. Samuel 
Communications of the ACM, April 2019, Vol. 62 No. 4, Page 100
10.1145/3274277

A 2014 IDC report predicted that by 2020, the digital universe—the data we create and copy annually—will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.10 With the explosive growth in organizational data, there is increasing emphasis on analytics that can be used to uncover the "hidden potential" of data. A 2014 Society for Information Management survey found analytics/business intelligence to be #1 among the top 15 most significant IT investments in the prior five years.12 It is not surprising that business analytics is increasingly central to managerial decision making within business functions: finance, marketing, human resources, and operations. For example, cash-flow analytics, shareholder-value analytics, and profit/revenue analytics are increasingly important aspects of the finance function. A 2017 survey of chief marketing officers found companies spend 6.7% of their marketing budgets on analytics and expect to spend 11.1% over the next three years.16 A 2017 Deloitte survey of HR managers found over 71% of the surveyed companies see people analytics as a high priority.3 Analytics is increasingly used in operations management for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, spare parts optimization, warranty management, and predictive asset maintenance. Acknowledging extreme deficiency of data literacy among today's managers, by 2020, 80% of organizations will embark on data-literacy initiatives.  .... "

Lessons from Corporate Nudging

Mixing Behavioral Science, Economics and Psychology.    Its likely that this concept will influence AI methods as implemented in assistant technologies.  But there are lots of issues in such methods.  Utimately its a test of how machines manage people.   Important challenges hinted at here.

Lessons from the front line of corporate nudging  By Anna Güntner, Konstantin Lucks, and Julia Sperling-Magro in McKinsey

Executives setting up a behavioral-science unit should start by challenging themselves with six questions.

If you’re serious about setting up a behavioral-science team—or a nudge unit, as we’ll more colloquially refer to it in this article—you need to ask yourself some tough questions, such as what it should do, where it should sit, how you’ll know it’s succeeding, and whether you’re ready for the ethical tensions it may raise.

Lessons from the front line of corporate nudging

Subtle interventions to help people make better decisions are hardly new. Since the 1950s, behavioral scientists, using a mix of economics and psychology, have studied human irrationality and devised ways both to improve the choices made by consumers and influence how employees react in the workplace. Increasingly, over the past two decades, companies have used the insights of behavioral science to reduce bias in boardrooms, improve strategic decision making, provide benefits for customers, enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and avoid making bad bets on major acquisitions or investments.  ... " 

Spending Innovation Budgets

I just was able to review  how we did this some years ago in the AI space.  Rings true.   I add: Spend what you can manage rather than looking for home runs was our take.   Manage expectations of decision makers.  Hype can be destructive.

The Right Way to Spend Your Innovation Budget  in the HBR   By Peder Inge Furseth, Richard Cuthbertson

Innovation is famously difficult — many projects end up losing money, frustrating employees, and going nowhere. And yet corporations and governments spend billions of dollars annually pursuing innovation. This huge spending would generate more value for businesses and societies if the innovation success rate were just a little higher. Is there a way to increase the success rate without spending more? ... " 

Ready to be Managed by an AI?

Course it does depend upon what managed means here.   Tracked, reminded, directed?    Some level of this will be inevitable.  Note mention of assistants, what is the effective difference between  assistance, augmentation and management? 

People are ready to have robots as their managers
By Lydia Dishman in Fast Company

We know that robots won’t completely eliminate our jobs (only about 5%, according to recent research), but a new study  by Oracle and Future Workplace of 1,320 U.S. HR leaders and employees found that an overwhelming majority (93%) would trust orders from a robot.

That’s easy to say because currently, this is theoretical in the workplace. Although plenty of people (70%according to this study) are using AI in some way at home (hello Google and Alexa!) the rate of adoption at work is still very low. Only 6% of HR professionals and 24% of employees are actively using it. .... " 

CEOs and Machine Learning

Good piece, wordy but useful description. A set of charts or infograpics might be better.

How CEOs Can Decode The Alphabet Soup Of Machine Learning  By Mike Salvino in Chief Executive.

Two words that are spoken in every leadership and board meeting around the world right now are “machine learning”.  Technology buzzwords seem to monopolize these meetings.  Who could forget: digital, big data, internet of things (IoT), mobility, …-as-a-service, security, the cloud and the recent favorite, blockchain?  Now, machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and numerous other technological terms that describe the artificial intelligence space have become this year’s buzzwords.

I’ve been in meetings with other executives where most people, including me, can’t make heads or tails of what people are talking about when this subject comes up. It’s like listening to a foreign language. If you are a CEO, your closest confidants are throwing all these words at you and you are thinking to yourself: “How did they learn this concept so fast? When did they become the expert in this space?” Most of them are just serving up the alphabet soup of the latest buzzwords to mask their own ignorance.  It’s up to you to figure out who knows what they are talking about (“contenders”), who doesn’t (“pretenders”), and whether this machine learning technology really matters to your business. .... "

Value of Halo Effect

Interesting top line, suggesting that established and known strategy and process is not enough.  Though I would still think its useful to document what you are doing as a means to finding improvement.  A  'Halo' is a easy to use simplification that is often not enough.  Perhaps a driver of driver of technology hype?

The halo effect, and other managerial delusions   By Phil Rosenzweig in McKinsey

Companies cannot achieve superior and lasting business performance simply by following a specific set of steps.

The quest of every high-quality corporate executive is to find the keys to superior performance. Achieving market leadership is hard enough, but staying at the top—given intense competition, rapidly changing technology, and shifting global forces—is even more difficult. At the same time, executives are under enormous pressure to deliver profitable growth and high returns for their shareholders. No wonder they constantly search for ways to achieve competitive advantage. .... "

Organizational Management

Good podcast, back to the notion of 'chasing shiny objects'.

What every leader needs to know about organizational management
Leaders of organizations should beware chasing the next shiny object and instead focus on practical, time-tested topics that have proved to bring success..... 

There’s so much lore around management and organizational leadership that it can seem nearly impossible to decide what tactics, advice, or best practices to follow. In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey senior partners Scott Keller and Mary Meaney speak with McKinsey’s Simon London about the ten timeless—and thoroughly researched—topics in management that they have found to be the keys to leading organizations to success. ... " 

AI Will Improve and Even Replace Bad Management

Yes, to the extent that it will improve all management.  The way many decades of digital methods have improved the process of management.  Making it faster, better, cheaper.  More based on data and results.    'Bad management' specifically?  Yes, ultimately.   In Inc:

AI Will Replace Bad Managers
Artificial intelligence is getting increasingly smarter and becoming more human-like, meaning its capacity to make decisions and take on larger roles is increasing.    By Jacob Morgan   ... " 

Resolving Conflict in Self-Managed Teams

Further, perhaps more important, when should a team be self managed?   In the HBR:

How Self-Managed Teams Can Resolve Conflict   by Amit Maimon

In a traditional team structure, conflicts can be escalated to the boss to resolve. Can’t agree on how to prioritize projects, or on which deadlines need to shift? Ask the team leader to step in and make a call. Think a coworker is acting snarky, or that their work is too sloppy? Advise the manager to give them some feedback. But for flat or self-managed teams, that’s not an option. Self-managed teams must identify different ways to find and address day-to-day conflicts.

Self-managed teams can focus on three things to help them successfully resolve conflicts. (Traditionally hierarchical teams may benefit from them too.)   .... " 

Rallying Around Common Goals

A most important topic,  even more so today in our heavily interacting world.   Focus.

Podcast:   In Knowledge@Wharton
Meaningful Work: What Leaders Can Learn from NASA and the Space Race  ... 

New Wharton research looks at how thousands of NASA employees with vastly different roles were able to rally around the common goal of a lunar landing in the 1960s.  ...  "

Managing Remote Teams

What we have learned about managing remote teams, have now been involved in many such efforts, in companies, large and small, in the HBR: 

What 20 Years as a Remote Organization Has Taught Us About Managing Remote Teams
by Randy Street, Dina Wang, Vamsi Tetali

In his 1974 interview with ABC News, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke painted a picture of how computers would change our way of life by the year 2001. One of his many extraordinarily accurate predictions: “Any businessman, any executive, could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through a device like this.”

Now, this prediction about remote working has not only come to life; it’s proved to be more beneficial than the traditional office model for some companies. The advisory firm we work for is one such company. Since its inception, in 1995, ghSMART has been a firm with a completely remote team. More than 80% of our work is done by teams of consultants and staff who operate out of their home offices. It’s working for us: ghSMART has seen more than 97% client satisfaction in the past decade, 93% team retention, and greater than 20% annual growth. Our journey of more than 20 years has led to a lot of success and has taught us some valuable lessons for how to make remote arrangements work ... "