Should Senior Managers Learn about AI from Younger Employees?

https://michaelmauro.medium.com

Katherine C. Kellogg and her co-authors have written a fascinating new HBS Working Paper titled "Don’t Expect Juniors to Teach Senior Professionals to Use Generative AI: Emerging Technology Risks and Novice AI Risk Mitigation Tactics."  They begin by noting that experienced managers often can learn a great deal from younger, less experienced employees.  The scholars note the benefits of this "reverse mentorship" in their paper.  They point out that junior employees are often closer to the work, able to experiment with new methods more easily, and often are more open to learning about new techniques and practices.  They point, for instance, at a famous ethnographic study by Stephen Barley in which he found that senior radiologists learned a great deal about new CT scanning technology in the 1980s from their less experienced colleagues. 

However, Kellogg and her fellow scholars argue that such positive benefits of reverse mentorship do not always materialize.  For instance, senior professionals may find that their status in the organization feels threatened by such reliance on junior colleagues.  Moreover, they argue that we need to be careful in some instances, when junior colleagues may still not have clear knowledge of the benefits AND risks of emerging technologies such as AI.  If the technology is still evolving rapidly, and the risks associated with its use are still unclear, then we may not want to be so reliant on younger employees to teach senior managers.  

Junior employees may simply not be well-equipped to engage in appropriate risk mitigation strategies, and they may not know how best to convey an understanding of those risks and the appropriate ways to manage them.  To me, it seems that we need a more collaborative approach in these cases of emerging technologies with unclear risks.  Together, we need to engage in the type of two-way dialogue that enables us to learn about the appropriate application of these new technologies in our organizations, rather than depending on one set of individuals to teach another set.   Reverse mentorship has its place in organizations, but it may not be the best model for embracing new AI methods and practices. 

Learning from the Young People in Your Organization

The youngest can teach the most experienced in an organization at times.  They have a fresh perspective, and they are often more up to date about new societal and technological trends.  Moreover, they may not fear challenging the conventional wisdom, as compared to some more experienced employees.   Organizations have formalized this notion, describing it as reverse mentorhship.  My earliest memory of such a practice comes from Welch's time as CEO of GE.  (video below). 

I had an interesting discussion today, though, with a group of executives about the notion of reverse mentorship.  One executive mentioned that it can be frustrating at times when young employees put forth new ideas on a frequent basis.  It's easy to push back and reject what feels like "pestering" or "badgering" by that individual.   As he said to me, you just want to say, "Look, I have more experienced than me.  Trust me.  There's a reason why we do it this way."  However, this executive noted that he has learned to restrain himself.   He tries hard to stay open to these new perspectives, and to withhold any frustration.   Why?  This young person has developed a solid track record.  The individual is getting the job done, with a strong likelihood of becoming a future leader in the organization.  That track record and potential has earned the executive's trust.  It translates into a willingness to listen, even if some of the ideas are off track.  If the person wasn't getting the job done, that would be another matter.   What a fascinating discussion about monitoring and controlling your own response to young people's ideas in your organization, as well as thinking about when you might be willing to tolerate a little more "badgering" and "pestering" by an inquisitive young mind.  

Meg Whitman: Listening to Millennials

Forbes has a great interview with Meg Whitman this week.  In it, she talks about listening carefully to millennials in her organization.  Here's an excerpt:  

Whitman says “entitled is too strong a word” to define new graduates, but even that isn’t so bad. In fact, the impatience of today’s youth is useful at a $50 billion sales corporation like Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “They refuse to work on things that do not matter,” she says. She receives emails frequently from young hires complaining that a project they are working on isn’t going anywhere. That’s surprising, but it’s also useful.  “You would be surprised how many projects we’ve killed because a 22-year-old says, ‘That’s stupid,’ ” Whitman told the audience. “It’s a little annoying honestly.”

I've argued in the past that senior executives need to listen to young people.  They hear about new trends, ideas, and perspectives from these people.  Moreover, they often represent a key target market for their goods and services.  Finally, as one executive told me, "They are stupid enough to tell me the truth."  It made me laugh, but it was also a profound statement.  He meant that these young people did not worry about offending the boss or losing their job.  They were more willing to speak their mind, in a way that some older workers were not in his organization.   Young people do not have the experience to always know the right answers on tough issues, but they bring a fresh lens to problems.  You do not have to agree with them, or give them their way, but you can learn from them.  

Using Internships to Facilitate the Reverse Mentoring Process

What is reverse mentoring?  It's when you have the new, young, rising talent in an organization teaching and advising the experienced managers and executives.   An effective reverse mentoring process enables senior executives to keep tabs on key social and technological trends.  Moreover, it provides a way for senior leaders to gain a better understanding of the millennial employee and customer.  

Phil McKinney has a great podcast focused on managing innovation (it's called Killer Innovations).  He is the CEO of CableLabs, and he formerly served as Chief Technology Officer for HP's Personal Systems Group.  McKinney says the following about reverse mentorship:

Each summer, we bring in interns across a wide range of disciplines: technical, legal, marketing and this year social media.  This years interns were impressive.  Over the years – I use interns to be my pulse on what is happening in the education system. In my previous role, I would select two and have them stay at my house. For their internship, they would report to someone else. At night – it was the barrage of constant questions. Why must we do something a certain way? Why aren’t we doing this?

Most people think I’m nuts for even doing this. I learn so much. It’s a process I call “reverse mentoring.”

Now most of us would not be willing to take interns into our homes.  However, we can find ways to structure a series of conversations with our summer interns to tap into their insights, knowledge, and creativity.   In some firms, you might do this through a series of one-on-one conversations with interns.  In others, you might assemble teams of interns, and ask each team to take on a particular innovation challenge for the firm.  The teams then might be given the opportunity to present their findings to senior executives.   Interns will enjoy this type of activity, because they get a chance to do something that is definitely not mundane, routine work.  Moreover, they have a chance to get in front of senior leaders.  Meanwhile, your organization creates a natural reverse mentoring process.

Reverse Mentoring

In 2009, I wrote about the very new concept of reverse mentoring in my book, Know What You Don't Know.  I'm very glad to see that the approach has begun to take hold in many companies.  Here's a new video created by the Wall Street Journal about the value of reverse mentoring: