Is AI the end of managers? Hardly. But it is forcing us to rethink leadership - away from pure administration and towards real leadership. Discover how you can use AI as a strategic co-pilot and create space for the essentials.
The question is haunting the boardroom: if AI is getting better and better at taking over management tasks such as planning, analysis and reporting - why do we managers still need it? The Handelsblatt ran the provocative headline: "And suddenly managers are also becoming replaceable". The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) even considers 67% of traditional management tasks to be automatable.
🎙️ You prefer to listen? Here's a short, AI-generated audio summary of this issue:
AI as a sparring partner: What managers need to learn from the Giesswein experiment about strategic leadership and the danger of "deceptive completeness"
So what's going on?
The observations are clear: AI tools such as ChatGPT can already support or even take over management tasks surprisingly well today. This is not only shown in theory, but also in practice:
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The Giesswein case: The shoe manufacturer tested ChatGPT in board meetings for a year. The result according to Harvard Business ManagerAI acted as a "positive disruptor", breaking up routines, providing fast data for decisions and broadening horizons with new ideas. It even saved costs for external agencies.
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The SME reality: In my conversations with entrepreneurs, it becomes clear that the biggest pain point is often not the strategic work, but the operational overload - the flood of e-mails, the endless coordination of deadlines, the time wasters in the administrative area. The desire for relief is huge.
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Own experience: We even used AI as a co-moderator in our own strategy workshop last week. Two specifically trained "Google Gems" helped us to cluster over 100 ideas from voice notes and photos in minutes - a task that would otherwise have taken hours. The result: more time for the Rating of ideas and the Planning the next steps.
AI is therefore advancing inexorably into management processes. It can analyze, structure and formulate - often faster and more comprehensively than humans.
What does this mean for you as an SME leader?
That is the crucial question. The automation of management tasks is No threat to real leadersbut a huge opportunity. It forces us to recognize the difference between mere Management (managing, controlling) and real Leadership (providing vision, developing people, shaping culture) and to focus on the latter.
This is the true benefit of AI in leadership, create mental and temporal freedom:
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Focus on the essentials: When AI takes over routine admin (appointments, email filtering, first drafts), you have more time for strategic issues, for your customers and, above all, for your employees. One entrepreneur aptly called it the desire for an "assistant as a service".
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More objective decision-making: As a neutral authority, AI can break through routines and bring facts into emotional discussions (as with Giesswein).
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Accelerated processes: Ad-hoc analyses or quick drafts can shorten decision-making cycles.
BUT: The Giesswein study and my own experience also show the limits and dangers. AI is a tool, not an autopilot. It hallucinates, overlooks context or important details ("deceptive completeness"). Yours critical thinking, your Experience and your Ability to categorize are becoming more important than ever! You have to learn to manage AI, question its results and adapt it to your values and goals.
What can you do now?
The key lies not in waiting or in huge projects, but in conscious, controlled experimentation.
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Identify time wasters: Where do you lose the most time in your day-to-day management work due to repetitive admin tasks? (Emails? Meetings? Reporting?) This is exactly where you start.
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Use standard tools: Often you don't need expensive custom development. The combination of tools such as ChatGPT/Gemini with your Outlook or Google Workspace already offers enormous possibilities if they are configured correctly. Use "Custom Instructions" or build simple "Custom GPTs/Gems".
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Experiment with prompts: The key to using AI effectively lies in prompting. For example, in our workshop we used specific prompts for idea analysis and solution synthesis (see box below). Try out how to give the AI clear roles, contexts and output formats to get useful results.
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Sharpen your critical thinking: Never blindly rely on AI results. Check facts, question assumptions and use AI as a sparring partner, not as an oracle.
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Lead your team: Take your employees on the journey with you. Explain the "why", create spaces for experimentation and coach them in how to use the new tools. An important lever for this is transparency: make the culture, but also the fears and opportunities in the team visible - a basis that we will specifically address in our upcoming practical workshop at the University of Liechtenstein.
AI in management is a journey that is only just beginning. As an SME leader, you have the opportunity to actively shape this journey - for more efficiency in management and, above all, for more time and focus on real leadership.
Practical tip: Our workshop prompts to try out
In a recent MMIND project kickoff, we used two Google Gems to quickly analyze and structure ideas. Here are the (slightly shortened) prompts as inspiration for your own assistants:
Your next step: moving from knowledge to action
Theory is important, but practice is crucial. If you want to deepen these topics and implement them directly, I invite you to our next Workshop at the SME Practice Forum of the University of Liechtenstein in:
Workshop: Digital responsibility and sustainability - the future of work
We will take the next step here on November 11:
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Practical block 1: Automated measurement of sustainability: With tools such as n8n and Google AI Studio, we have developed instruments that perform automated and verifiable calculations of resource consumption and compliance comparisons - a shoulder view.
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Practical block 2: AI practice: Together, we develop small AI assistants that solve the participants' use cases.
You will learn how AI facilitates data-based decisions, how to open up your corporate culture to digital transformation and how to implement targeted measures for productive AI integration.
P.S. Finally, the Giesswein case as a video snapshot:
