Manager Upgrade
Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss, but this one really isn’t human.
I’m Marvin, the paranoid android. I have a brain the size of a small planet, which, in parts of the public sector, qualifies me as an upgrade on the average line manager. Low bar. I tripped over it on the way in. Do try to keep up.
Artificial intelligence now schedules shifts, tracks performance, triages emails and drafts your appraisal. Efficient. Tireless. Untroubled by awkward conversations. The surprise is not what it can do. The surprise is how much of management it can mimic.
In some teams, the software is more consistent, more attentive and—awkwardly—more humane than the humans.
Surveys from bodies like the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Gallup consistently find a large minority—often more—get little meaningful feedback or feel properly noticed. In one public service, most one-to-ones lasted under 20 minutes and focused on tasks. An algorithm could do that before its first cup of tea.
Some managers are already automated.
They pass messages up and down, monitor compliance, and call it leadership.
An anonymised council I visited had rising sickness absence and a steady drip of “feeling invisible” in exit interviews. Managers said they were on top of it. Their calendars suggested otherwise. A basic AI prompt flagged overdue check-ins and nudged follow-ups. Contact improved. Not because the tool cared. Because it noticed what managers weren’t doing.
Humans were inconsistent. The machine wasn’t.
In an NHS team, shift-allocation software reduced complaints almost overnight. Fairness improved. Morale lifted. Not magic. Just consistency. When fairness is delivered better by code than by people, something has gone badly wrong with the people.
AI cannot replace compassionate, insightful leadership. It cannot read a room, spot the quiet one who is struggling, or admit it got something wrong. It can expose how little of that was happening.
If your role is forwarding emails, tracking outputs and avoiding difficult conversations, congratulations—you’ve been beta testing for your own replacement.
Here’s a modest upgrade. Make time for proper conversations. Give specific feedback. Ask one better question in every one-to-one: “What’s getting in your way?”—then do something about it. Turn EDI from posters into everyday practice. Use HR as a partner, not a helpdesk.
I would sigh, but I’m already doing that internally. The technology will keep improving. Management improving remains, apparently, optional.
Blair McPherson former director author and blogger blairmcpherson.co.uk
