An interesting story from our contemporaries in London about skill deficits appeared recently. It is about the intersection between the two biggest workplace issues of the past few years: remote work and AI.

The news, as I see it, is this: The belief among the leaders of many of the big consulting firms is that AI tools are—or perhaps will be soon—able to take over the more straightforward tasks of consulting. That might mean clients can do them without the help of consultants, although it turns out that the issue has been less about the client’s own skills and more about not having staff to do them. More likely, the clients will not want to pay as much for the work. We have already seen big clients arguing that their law firms should be cutting their rates because AI is taking over more of the work.

This issue is a double-whammy for any business billing by the hour. If AI can take over more work, then the firms get a whole lot more done in an hour and finish projects faster. That means less time the hourly advisor can bill. If the clients are also demanding cuts in the per-hour rates, that will certainly leave a big mark on their finances.

What the consulting firms are saying is that more of their future success will be based on what cannot be so easily automated or turned over to AI. Of course, that sounds right.  Exactly what can’t be done by AI keeps changing, but their bet is that it will be based on interpersonal skills.

Here’s where remote work comes up short

That is where the connection to remote working comes in. Their belief, which sounds right to me, is that new hires, in particular, learn interpersonal skills in face-to-face relationships. Learning doesn’t work well in virtual meetings, in part, because we simply cannot watch how others react. That assumes we are actually paying attention. In most meetings now, it seems that participants (and I use that term loosely) have their cameras off, or worse, just send their agent to take notes.

The idea is also that employees lose interpersonal skills when they don’t see each other, and new hires never develop them. Why might this be especially so for consulting firms? Because they have a business model based on learning-by-doing. New hires are given a task that their mentor/supervisor, who might only be a year or so ahead of them, knows how to do, and the new hire initially can watch to see how it is done. Then they do it. In other words, the company is not paying for training. What is expensive about training is mainly when employers pay for someone to sit in a classroom. These models are cheap because the learner is actually producing something useful as they learn, as with apprentice systems in the trades.

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