Across industries and sectors—companies, non-profits, and schools share something in common: the recognition that the rise in technical and societal complexity must be matched with an increased commitment to learning and the development of moral reasoning, leadership capabilities, and foundational skills. 

This Blueprint offers some future-focused provocations for boards and leaders about what and how adults and young people learn.

- Stephanie

In the recent paper “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts About the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence,” Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen use administrative data from ADP (the largest payroll software provider in the US) to track employment dynamics before and after the introduction of ChatGPT.

Their primary finding: “[W]e uncover substantial declines in employment for early-career workers (ages 22-25) in occupations most exposed to AI, such as software developers and customer service representatives.”

We are not surprised, and, anecdotally, we understand this is happening in a wide range of professions—consulting, banking, and law as easy examples. 

Crucially, however, not all uses of AI are linked with declines in employment. The authors write, “In particular, entry-level employment has declined in applications of AI that automate work, but not those that most augment it.” In fact, they “find employment growth in occupations in which AI use is most augmentative.”

What are the implications for education—both within school and beyond?

We offer a few thoughts for consideration culled from this paper and other interesting reads below: 

1. Help learners build experience beyond the facts, figures, and codified knowledge that AI models are trained on.

The paper notes, “AI may be less capable of replacing tacit knowledge, the idiosyncratic tips and tricks that accumulate with experience.” Can learning in school be designed to give students more access to insights and experience that previously would have been learned “on the job”? 

This is not a new concept. At GLP, we’ve been encouraging and supporting educational organizations for decades as they implement approaches that build connections beyond the classroom and between subject areas. There is, however, a new urgency if graduates are going to succeed in a world with AI.

2. Help learners develop the skills to use AI as a tool.

In a wry footnote, the authors of “Canaries in the Coal Mine” write, “Ironically, one of the practical skills more likely to be learned on the job than in university computer science classes may be how to use AI software development.”

Are there skills and lessons that are important today that we are resisting teaching? With every new technology—the calculator, internet search, AI—there has often been a lag in embracing the tool within the classroom. And—as we can see from the findings in their paper—if you don’t learn to use AI as a tool before the job, you may not get a chance to learn it on the job!

Equally important is this question: Are there skills and lessons we assume our students or employees know because the technologies are so pervasive in our lives? As we saw with so-called “digital natives” in the early 2000s, being surrounded by technology doesn’t automatically mean you know how to harness those tools in productive ways—especially when the use involves creating rather than just consuming.

3. Help learners access better learning.

In “I Taught My 3-Year Old to Read ‘The Hobbit’” Erik Hoel describes “aristocratic tutoring”—a type of one-on-one instruction where an expert instructs the child and also fosters engagement with intellectual subjects. Hoel traces this tradition back many thousands of years, reflecting on the tutors of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and fast-forwarding to many of the well-known names of the 20th century—physicist Lord Kelvin, mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, philosopher Voltaire—who served as tutors while pursuing intellectual breakthroughs. Hoel decided to try this “aristocratic tutoring” approach when teaching his 3-year-old son to read. After a year, his son can read independently with enjoyment.

Hoel's experience with his very young child is unusual for obvious reasons, but the points he makes about time, focused attention, and effectiveness in learning are interesting Adults and children learn everywhere and in a variety of ways. While we are not convinced that tutoring replaces the wider benefits provided in schools or other formats, we do wonder about the insights we might glean for where tutoring is most efficacious—and how it can complement deeper, experiential, and applied approaches to learning in schools and in the workplace.

One example is for boards and new board member education. We wonder if the tutor approach can quickly help trustees and directors build the specific and general knowledge they need to govern - while acclimating them to their new role. We hear all the time that most onboarding processes are insufficient - and for most board members it takes quite a bit time to settle in and develop a broad systems level understanding of an organization. How do we maximize their talent from the go?

To explore a vision of governance that models inquiry and ways boards can reposition themselves to continually evolve, see our paper: The Adaptive Board: Governance and Learning in a New Era.

4. Help learners see the relevance of what they’re learning.

Tutoring addresses time and attention. Both are valuable, particularly when content is abundant. In a recent Link In Bio post, Rachel Karten highlights the following quote from a talk by Cameron Gidari, VP of Social Media & Innovation at Major League Baseball (who originally heard it from Justin Karp of NBC Sports): 

"People say that Gen Z has a short attention span on social media. They don't. They have a short consideration span.”

Gen Z will stay with a 5-minute video—or an hour-long video—if it’s interesting to them, but will scroll past after a few seconds if the video doesn’t give them a good reason to watch. The point is applicable well beyond social media—and it’s not just Gen Z who has a short “consideration span.” When preparing a lesson (or a meeting!), it’s worth asking: is this topic important and relevant? How can we show from the very beginning that there’s a good reason to engage? Moreover, how do we develop the habits of sustained attention and focus?

In Charting a New Course for Education, the authors describe the potentially dire consequences of allowing the “Relevance Gap” to continue to widen: “As young people’s realities grow further and further removed from the world of school, education systems face an urgent need to integrate students’ emerging needs, concerns, and aspirations into learning.”

Created with a focus on K-12 schools, this paper explores the current context—social fragmentation and conflict, artificial intelligence, climate concerns, eroding public institutions—and offers a series of “What If” provocations to envision, study, and discuss as you prepare for and shape the future of your organization. Though focused on schools, the drivers of change and “what if” scenarios the authors examine will have impacts and consequences for every sector. 

5. Help learners strengthen skills that endure beyond the current moment and the latest trend.

The HBR article “Soft Skills Matter Now More Than Ever, According to New Research” highlights the impact as the “half-life” of technical skills continues to drop: 

Economist David Deming, who recently became Dean of Harvard College, underscores this point in “Shorting the AI Jobs Apocalypse” and in his welcome address to the Class of 2029: 

“Turbulent times,” Deming writes, “are windows of opportunity for well-educated ambitious young people.” The same can be said for organizations that are willing to re-examine how best to advance their mission—and their people. That starts with leaders and managers who model what matters. 

NAVIGATING LEADERSHIP:
Culture and Learning as Strategy

This HBR article examines one of the most talked about but least understood priorities in leadership: organizational culture. The authors note:

The same insight is reflected in the Gallup research highlighted in the Forbes article “Are Your Leaders Culture Carriers or Culture Barriers?”

The article describes five patterns that signal a culture barrier:

Values take root because people can see them—in actions and decisions. Leaders spend time asking the right questions.

As noted in this HBR article, “In companies where senior leaders changed how they led—how they ran meetings, gave feedback, made decisions, and responded to challenge—trust scores rose by an average of 26%, even in the absence of a branded campaign. As one executive told us, ‘We didn’t write our values—we reverse-engineered them from how we wanted to behave.’”

Effective leaders learn continuously—and model the culture they want to create. The same is true for effective boards. The actions, mindsets, and decisions at the board and executive level have effects that cascade throughout the organization.

Great governance starts with the right composition. What is the role of the board and how do you build a board that adds and creates value? Our most recent paper provides insights and steps to help transform your approach to board composition—including five mindset shifts that are essential for every member of your board.

And, one of the most important but overlooked responsibilities boards have is to make their organizations resilient with what we call "everyday succession planning." Boards can do this by establishing a new approach to succession planning and leadership transitions. Crucially, this process doesn’t begin and end with hiring the new CEO. 

And when leadership transitions do happen, they require a fresh commitment by the board and the new CEO to clarify and define roles, responsibilities, protocols for communication and decision-making, and agreement of strategic direction. As noted in this HBR article, alignment and agreement doesn’t happen automatically—and “[v]iews that seemed to be aligned in principle during interviews can quickly diverge in practice.” 

The article highlights 8 steps to facilitate better board-CEO alignment that we have found to be beneficial for non-profit and educational organizations. We highlight 4 here:

Documenting your decisions will provide a helpful reference—especially during difficult times. And the process of discussing, agreeing, and establishing protocols will help reduce or avoid the difficult times that can result from board-CEO friction! 

Just as it is important to purposefully build your board and actively shape the board-CEO partnership, so too is it important to proactively design the executive leadership team. Similar to boards, executive teams can often be burdened by a legacy approach. The HBR article “Set Up Your C-Suite to Execute Your Strategy” notes:

The authors present 3 steps for reimagining your C-suite:

Though this Blueprint has taken us from the classroom to the board room, we’ve seen common themes throughout:

stephanierogen@greenwichleadershippartners.com

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