What managers and team leads should be asking about AI

Delegation, supervision and running a team where the first draft of everything arrives already written.

Of the 284 questions on the questions map, these 75 are the ones managers and team leads have a specific reason to ask. 29 have a dedicated answer; the rest are partly answered or openly on the roadmap, and are marked as such rather than quietly dropped. Last reviewed 29 August 2026.

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The 12 that matter most, with what the research says in one line.

• AnsweredWho supervises work they cannot do themselves?

  Supervision has become approval, and no management system in common use can tell the difference.

• PartialHow do I decide what to automate?

  Nine stages, and the question answered per stage rather than per tool.

• PartialHow much verification is enough?

  Verification is treated as administrative residue and priced accordingly, so it gets skipped rather than resourced.

• AnsweredWhat is the verifier's discount?

  Verification is skilled work priced as administrative residue, so organisations get less of it than they think they bought.

• OpenShould juniors use AI at all?

  Open, and the answer is almost certainly not a simple yes or no.

• PartialHow do you develop juniors now?

  By deciding which repetitions are development rather than cost. Most organisations have never made that distinction explicitly.

• OpenWhat happens to middle management?

  Open, and asked constantly. Middle management is where work is allocated and judgement is checked, which are the two functions AI touches most directly. Nobody has yet measured what happens to a layer whose main output was coordination.

• AnsweredWho gets credit when AI helped?

  Recognition follows visible output, and AI makes output cheap to produce and hard to attribute.

• OpenHow do you brief a team when AI drafts everything?

  Open. When the first draft is close to free, the brief carries more weight than it used to, because it becomes the main place where thinking is specified rather than assumed. What that means in practice has not been studied.

• AnsweredShould I let an AI agent act on my behalf?

  Not a trust question. What is the worst thing it can do before a human sees it, and can you live with that?

• OpenWhat does an AI-capable manager do differently?

  Open. Most published answers describe tool fluency. The more useful version asks what a manager decides in advance about where judgement stays human, and how they would notice if their team stopped being able to do the work unaided.

• AnsweredShould AI attend my meetings?

  Depends whether the meeting produces a record or produces understanding. Most organisations apply one policy to both.

Everything else managers and team leads ask

Grouped the way the map is grouped. Each links to its answer, or to its place on the map if it is still open.

Same questions, different reader: Boards and directors CHROs and HR leaders School and university leaders Early career and graduates Regulated and expert professions Parents The full map, all 284