I think we've officially entered the era of the AI empowered generalist. I honestly think if you have good communication skills and you know how to use AI, you could do 80% of white collar jobs better than an expert of that job could do without those skills.
And there's definitely still room for specialists. There's custom work and edge cases that AI doesn't handle well. But I think companies that are figuring out how to rebuild their processes with AI in mind are realizing that they don't need teams of five or six people anymore.
They need teams of two or three people.
And just by providing AI the right documentation and sophisticated skills, those two or three people can handle the roles of several specialists and spend most of their time focusing on those things that humans do best, like communicating.
And this makes sense not just because AI is making those people more efficient, but also you're removing the inefficiencies of larger teams. Sherman said that a team of three people doesn't produce three times the output, they produce about twice the output.
By reducing your team size, you remove the inefficiencies of having to share information, coordinate projects, having to hop on calls to make sure you're on the same page or wait for someone else on your team to finish their task before you can proceed.
When you structure your business for AI first, where AI is handling most of the work, one person can often take a project from beginning to end uninterrupted.