role-redesign-for-ai

Role Redesign For AI Skill

When AI absorbs 40% of a role's tasks, orgs default to the worst option: say nothing, and let expectations quietly inflate until the human is doing their old job plus supervising the machine, evaluated by standards from neither. This skill makes the redesign explicit — what the role stops doing, what it now owns, and what "good" means after the shift.

What This Skill Produces

• A task inventory, before/after: what AI took, what it created, what stayed human — with hours
• The redefined core: the role's new centre of gravity, written as a charter
• New expectations & metrics: what performance means now (and which old metrics are dead)
• Level and growth-path implications — including the junior-pipeline problem, faced honestly

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The role today: title, level, the real task list (or the JD plus what the JD lies about)
• What AI actually absorbed — observed, not vendor-promised: which tasks, how completely, with what verification burden
• The person/team context: one person or a team of eight? tenure mix? current performance framework?
• The org's honest intent: same headcount doing more? fewer people? higher-value work? (The redesign differs; refusing to pick is itself the problem — flag it.)

Redesign Method

1. Inventory tasks, not titles. List the role's tasks with weekly hours. Mark each: AI-absorbed (machine does it, human spot-checks) · AI-assisted (human does it faster) · AI-created (new work: prompting, verifying, correcting, supervising agents) · Human-core (judgment, relationships, accountability, taste). The AI-created column is the one orgs forget — verification is work, and it's in this role now.
2. Balance the hours honestly. Old role = 40h. Absorbed −12h, assisted −6h, created +8h → 10h of genuine capacity. The redesign decides where those hours go on purpose: deeper human-core work, wider scope, or reduced load. Unallocated capacity becomes silent expectation inflation within a quarter.
3. Redefine the core. The role's new centre is what only it can be accountable for. Write the charter in outcomes: what this role owns (decisions, quality bars, relationships), what it supervises (the AI-done work — with the verification standard stated), what it no longer does (named, so nobody performs it out of habit or fear).
4. Rewrite the metrics. Kill throughput metrics the machine now drives (tickets closed, words shipped, drafts produced) — a human evaluated on machine output is being evaluated on prompt luck. New metrics live where the human is: judgment quality (error catch rate on AI output, decision outcomes), the human-core outcomes, and supervision health. Pair with [ai-assisted-performance-review](../ai-assisted-performance-review/SKILL.md) for the review conversation itself.
5. Face the ladder problem. If AI absorbed the tasks juniors learned on, the pipeline to senior judgment is cut. The redesign states how the next cohort develops: deliberate reps on AI-done tasks (inefficient on purpose), verification apprenticeships, or a redesigned junior role — "we'll figure it out" is how professions hollow out.
6. Plan the conversation. The redesign lands as a change to someone's identity, not their task list. The rollout: the draft is discussed with the people in the role before it's announced, the "no longer does" list is framed as release not demotion, and comp/level implications are stated in the same meeting they're wondered about.

Output Format

Role Redesign: [title] — post-AI charter

Intent (stated): [more output / fewer people / higher-value work — the org's actual answer]

Task inventory

| Task | Hrs before | Status | Hrs after | Note |

|---|---|---|---|---|

(with the AI-created verification/supervision rows present)

Capacity math: [freed hours → where they were deliberately allocated]

The new charter: Owns: […] · Supervises (with verification standard): […] · No longer does: […]

Metrics: [dead metrics, named as dead · new metrics with definitions]

Ladder implications: [how juniors now develop the judgment this role's seniors have]

Rollout: [discussion-before-announcement plan · the comp/level statement · review date for the charter itself]

Quality Checks

• [ ] The AI-created work (verification, supervision) appears in the inventory with hours
• [ ] Freed capacity is explicitly allocated — no silent 140% expectation
• [ ] At least one legacy throughput metric is explicitly killed
• [ ] The "no longer does" list is concrete enough that someone could stop doing those things tomorrow
• [ ] The junior-pipeline question is answered, not deferred
• [ ] The org's intent (headcount vs scope) is stated in the document

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not redesign the role without the people in it — a charter discovered in a reorg deck creates the resistance it deserved
• [ ] Do not keep old throughput metrics "for continuity" — they now measure the vendor, not the human
• [ ] Do not treat verification as slack time — reviewing machine output at quality is skilled work with hours
• [ ] Do not write "focus on higher-value work" without naming the work — that phrase is where redesigns go to die
• [ ] Do not skip the intent question — a redesign that won't say whether headcount changes will be read as concealing it, correctly