WINDOW INTO THE FUTURE OF WORK

1. Use AI to practice the awkward stuff

47% of Gen Z sellers say they don’t get enough chances to roleplay before customer calls. 46% rarely get feedback on the conversations they do have.

That’s a problem AI is almost perfect for!

Harriet Hodgson-Grove, a partner at a UK accounting firm, uses AI voice mode to rehearse difficult conversations before having them for real. She’ll ask it to interrupt, challenge her or stay silent so she can test how the conversation might actually unfold.

And this goes way beyond sales. It works with a difficult feedback chat, defending an idea to your boss, a negotiation, or presenting to a sceptical client.

TRY THIS

Before your next presentation, pitch, interview or difficult conversation:

2. Don’t give AI work you can’t judge yet

From September, Deloitte’s new graduate auditors will learn some “old-school auditing” alongside AI-assisted work. One exercise has them do a cash reconciliation themselves (basically checking that the records and cash balances match) then review one produced by AI.

As AI takes on more of the manual work junior auditors used to learn on, Deloitte says the goal is to get new hires further up the learning curve sooner, doing more work that requires judgement, curiosity and scepticism.

There’s a useful rule hiding in that for the rest of us. You don’t need to manually do every spreadsheet, research pass or first draft forever. But if AI gave you a very convincing wrong answer tomorrow, would you catch it?

TRY THIS

For one task you use AI for regularly, build the checking habit before the shortcut:

3. Diagnose before you re-prompt

A bad AI answer turns a lot of us into slot-machine operators:

One thing we’ve learned from running 15 Days of AI is that structure beats endlessly prompting harder. In BCG’s People Team pilot, 122 participants produced 1,423 outputs using AI on actual work. Things like candidate-screening assistants, onboarding scripts, compensation analysis, HR dashboards and email-triage systems.

They didn’t just use AI more. They were given repeatable ways to think through the task first.

TRY THIS

When the next answer sucks, paste:

Then answer those questions before generating version two. A bad output is useful if it tells you what was missing. Otherwise you’re just pulling the lever again.

WANT TO START BUILDING WITH AI?

A lot of non-technical professionals can already see what in their work should be automated. Until recently, they just couldn’t build it themselves.

Harold Dijkstra and Kieran Ball are running a 3-week AI Builder Bootcamp starting Sept 7 to help you turn those ideas into working apps, automations and AI workflows.

ONE MORE THING WORTH READING 📬

If you’re thinking about your next career move, The Dose has a free 5-step planner for figuring out where you are, where you want to go, and what to do next.

You get it free when you subscribe to their weekly newsletter on careers, work and earning more.

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BEFORE YOU GO

Anyway. Enjoy your Sunday. I’m off to let AI do the work while I provide the judgment. And judging by Thibault from OpenAI, apparently the humans are still doing quite a lot 😭

See you next Sunday! ✌️