Managing agents ≠ managing people

We're about to get virtual coworkers, aka cybernetic teammates. The key skill going forward will be high-output management of agents.

Peter Yang posted on X that "management skills will actually become more important in the AI era," specifically:

1. Giving specific instructions
2. Setting clear expectations
3. Giving examples of what "good" looks like
4. Editing and evaluating work

This is true. However, this articulation occludes the managerial skills that are important when managing people but unimportant or even counterproductive when managing agents. The skills that don't matter when managing agents are:

• EQ
• Charisma
• Managing up
• Stakeholder diplomacy
• Cross-functional coordination

Another one close to home is "executive presence." That's one I've personally struggled with in more than one role. Let's consider this one for a moment.

To steelman the importance of executive presence, it would be that employees work better when they have confidence and even admiration for company leaders. Executives who present executively inspire confidence; those that don't, don't.

Now, I personally think there are some remarkable exceptions to this in recent decades: Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Dylan Field, and Elon before he went crazy.

I never got a great definition of executive presence. You know it when you see it, I guess. I think executive presence is really about signaling similarity to other executives who have been successful before. In other words, executive presence is conveying resemblance to familiar successful people. I think that might not be a good formula for running a business.

The book Good to Great, one of those renowned business books that are in every airport bookstore, surprisingly affirms this. That book studied public companies whose share price growth significantly exceeded the overall market growth. The authors found that the leaders of such companies were internal hires who had been with the company for a long time and had an understated demeanor. It turns out the CEOs who drove the most alpha were precisely the ones who lacked the kind of telegenic charisma one might associate with executive presence.

In any case, managing agents will not be like managing people. Emotional intelligence and the like are important in life, to be sure, but increasingly they will not be important at work.