Knowledge Work: The AI Manager Enters the Office

All courses / AI Boss / Module 2 / Chapter 10

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Apply the four tests (addressee, default, trace, decision) to office features.
Explain how meeting summaries, workflow allocation and analytics touch M1 Direction, M2 Evaluation and M4 Development.
State what the cited productivity studies measured and why they are not evidence about AI performing management functions.
Build a feature register entry with function, mode, degree, unit of reporting and agreement status.

Key concepts

Four tests: The addressee: the output names and reaches another person. The default: it takes effect unless someone intervenes. The trace: it is stored where it can inform a review. The decision: nobody decided that the feature should perform a management function.
Feature register: An extension of the delegation register that lists features, not products, with management function, usage mode, degree, unit of reporting, prohibited uses, accountable person and agreement status for each.
Transparency paradox: Bernstein's finding that observability can prompt workers to conceal what they do, so that the organisation sees an illusion of transparency; shielding production lines from routine observation improved their performance.
Unit of reporting: The level at which a figure is shown. By default, figures about collaboration, focus or wellbeing go to the individual alone or to groups of at least ten, and are never ranked by person.
Development rule: A rule in a workflow agent's delegation profile, beside the throughput rule, so that allocation does not send every complex case to the fastest experienced handler and starve juniors of the work from which they learn.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Match

Office features and usage modes

Match each usage mode with the typical office feature that Chapter 10's table gives for it.

Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario

Personal insights by default

Apply the chapter's rules for deciding about office features to the situation below, which follows Hansa Mutual's worked example.

Teaching plan

15 min	The teacher follows one meeting summary from transcript to task list and shows the degrees: Level 0 Advisory with the chair confirming, Level 1 Assisted, Level 2 Supervised.
15 min	Participants apply the four tests to three features: a meeting assistant, a ticket-allocating agent and an analytics pane showing individual focus time.
10 min	Presentation of what was measured in the productivity studies, the transparency paradox, and BetrVG section 87(1) no. 6 read as suited to monitoring.
25 min	Exercise: groups build a feature register for one office suite and take one entry through the representatives' process on paper.
10 min	Debrief with the two decisions: Hansa Mutual's AIDR-0670 keeping analytics switched off group-wide, and Nordvik Region's sample of 12 meetings leading to AIDR-0620.

Discussion

The chapter says the default of most products, distribution of action items without the chair's approval, has to be changed deliberately. Who in your organisation would take that decision, and would they know it was theirs?
Hansa Mutual rejected enabling only the personal insights, and enabling the feature outside Germany. What are the arguments for and against one group-wide standard?
Figures reported at team level, to the team, preserve the space in which people try better ways of working. Where does that argument reach its limit for a manager who must still exercise M5 Care?

Written exercise

Exercise · 25 minutes

A feature register for the office suite

List at least five features, not products, of the office suite, collaboration tools or workflow agents in your own organisation, or use the chapter's examples at Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual. Apply the four tests to each. For every feature that names or measures another person, write a register entry: the management functions it touches, the usage mode, the degree per function using the chapter's defaults, the unit of reporting, the prohibited uses, the accountable person and the status of the representatives' agreement. Mark any feature that passes the first three tests and fails the fourth, and say what must be decided before it stays enabled.

Deliverable: A feature register with at least three complete entries in the form of FTR-NR-SA-01, and a list of undecided features with the decision each needs.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

What did Nordvik Region find when it sampled the summaries of 12 pilot meetings from December 2026?
Show the answer
A. Of 48 action items, 9 carried owners the chair had not confirmed, and 3 of those 9 people had treated the item as an instruction
The sample showed that proposed owners were being read as instructions although the profile said Level 0 Advisory. AIDR-0620 therefore changed the pilot so that a summary with unconfirmed owners cannot be distributed.
A feature passes the addressee, default and trace tests but fails the fourth test. What does the chapter call the result?
Show the answer
C. An AI boss the organisation did not choose
The fourth test asks whether anyone decided that the feature should perform a management function, at a stated degree, with a named person accountable. Where nobody did, the organisation has an AI boss it did not choose; the remedy is to decide it.
Why does the chapter say the cited productivity studies of generative AI leave the evidence base for the office AI boss thin?
Show the answer
B. They measured AI assisting individual workers; none measured AI performing management functions
The assistants in the studies supported the worker and, in customer support, reduced the load on the human manager; they did not allocate or evaluate work. So the evidence on AI that assigns, summarises and reports about people is thin.