The Hidden Cost of Firing Humans
When you fire the human, you also fire the agents and the infrastructure keeping your business running.
When you fire an outsourced team (marketing or otherwise) or a human who's AI-powered:
Know that they:
- Have the deep context of your business
- Have the institutional knowledge you haven't handed off to AI
- Have the codes/connectors to keep your business humming.
Just like what Dan Rosenthal shared here, it’s deeply ingrained into ops.
You will also be firing multiple of their AI agents, which have now created workflows to keep ops running.
What does it mean for companies?
- Teams that are "forward-deployed" should charge more
- Services that are human-enabled and AI-powered should charge more
- Teams that are in-house for a brand should be upskilled with AI instead of being fired
What does it mean for the actual operators (not C-suite)?
- Be more valuable than an AI agent
- Provide value beyond workflows
- Provide output instead of merely input (tokens, context, strat)
How to be more valuable than AI?
Answer: Spin the plates better.
As in:
- strategic context switching power across domains and tasks
- ability to navigate tasks that are ambiguous and unstructured
- make judgment calls even when context is incomplete
- make your boss enjoy working with you
If you're not that, time to go into farming.
But what's the benefit of retaining your AI-native team or partner? Beyond what I mentioned above, AI-powered teams that are rooted in your infra and context can now justify premium switching costs.
Companies whose founder-operators know this will see why they still want humans and know that they can’t just replace their whole team with AI agents. But the operators do really have to step up their game.