For those of a certain mind, most of life’s challenges can be viewed through the prism of football. There is little that football cannot teach us.
I’m thinking about football when I think of how AI might impact the workplace.
In football, Systems Coaching, as proposed by Antonio Conte or the Chelsea-era José Mourinho, demands all players be in service to the system. Players must remain disciplined, follow set patterns and execute the orders of the manager.
Is this how AI embeds itself in our work? Employees are given a top-down directive on which AI platform to use, a library of approved prompts, and told they will be judged on performance metrics. Rather than distance run or xG, it is how quickly a piece of content is produced or the number of social media posts auto-created. Employees serve the machine.
The opposite end, Principles-Based Coaching (also known, by critics, as chaos) says we must be fluid, spontaneous and ready to move quickly when conditions on the pitch change. In the AI workplace this might mean keeping an open mind on tools, and creating a culture where employees are curious and results-focused.
Instinctively, I feel warmer towards the latter idea (though as a Liverpool fan, and having enjoyed nine years of Jurgen Klopp, that is no surprise). Realistically, employers might find it easier and more practical to insist on the former.
For those who make money from producing content, I imagine this debate will centre around two questions. Can a systems approach to AI produce standard content more quickly and efficiently? Can a curious approach create new types of content? Answering either question may require building a new commercial model.
If this discussion is of interest, and you don’t want to hear any more football analogies, here are five thoughts on the subject, all from 2025:
- How To Be Human In The Age Of AI (Forbes)
- How we can elevate uniquely human skills in the age of AI (World Economic Forum)
- Human and machine: Rediscovering our humanity in the age of AI (CIO)
- Human-artificial interaction in the age of agentic AI: a system-theoretical approach (Frontiers)
- The Philosophical Bet We All Need to Make in the Age of AI (Time)
You can read them, or you could feed your AI of choice and ask it to summarise them (or convert to audio, or as a mindmap, or quiz or study guide).
What you shouldn’t do is ignore the subject. Some good advice from #5 on the list:
Either AI will radically transform work, education, corporations, and society within a short interval of time, or it won’t. If we prepare for change and it doesn’t materialize, we’ve likely invested in digital literacy, rethought ossified institutions, and considered options for how to distribute income other than through wages. These are hardly catastrophic losses.
