One of the great hallmarks of a posh hotel is the experience of being greeted by someone wearing a top hat and tails. I wonder if we could cast our minds back a couple of generations, however, and into the board room of a successful hotel that’s brought in a management consultant to help them make the most of innovative technology.
Rory Sutherland talks about this in his book Alchemy, describing what happens as The Doorman Fallacy. The consultant watches the young man at work and records the tasks he carries out. He seems to stand there, wasting company resources by gossipping and/or flirting with other staff members, until a guest arrives, at which point he opens the door.
“Good news!” the consultant shares. “Using cutting-edge technology, we can replace the front door with one that will open automatically. By making the doorman redundant, you will save $x over the next five years!”
The automatic door is put in, and five years later the hotel’s margins have gotten worse. Salary costs have decreased slightly, but so have guest rates. Replacing the human with technology was a false economy.
Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to apply this example to the adoption of technology more widely.
Why innovation disappoints
The consultant in our story falls into the same trap technology salespeople do so often, by defining only the functions of a piece of technology. It’s a simple mistake to make; they’re straightforward to define, and who doesn’t want an easy life? But when we do it we paint ourselves into a corner.
That doorman might even describe his own job only as opening the door, but in practice there’s a lot more going on. When a piece of litter blows across the entrance he picks it up. When a guest returns he recognises them and maybe even greets them by name. That wasted time gossipping and flirting actually keeps the morale of the staff up, reducing turnover and time lost to sickness. And his simple presence, hat and coat on, intangibly communicates a premium experience, giving permission for the rates to remain high.
As AI continues to be developed in the worlds of coaching specifically and other related fields, products will emerge that promise to be able to replicate and even improve on the human experience:
- The AI will always be available – that’s better
- The AI has enough capacity to offer coaching to as many people as need it – that’s better
- The AI will operate at a fraction of the cost of a human – that’s better
- The AI will always listen attentively, taking into account everything that’s been said – that’s better
- The AI will stick wholeheartedly to a specific model – at least from a measurable perspective that’s better
- The AI will interpret non-verbal communication much more accurately than a human will
When laid out in these stark terms, isn’t the decision an obvious one? Who wouldn’t go with an AI over a human when the performance is so obviously superior and the cost is so much lower?
And yet we all know that, in reality, coaching is so much more than a ticklist of narrow functions. A coaching conversation isn’t a normal conversation within tight boundaries to strip out everything that’s not coaching. It’s a normal conversation plus so much more!
Back its adoption anyway
Perhaps the most compelling use case for the adoption of AI is found in our friend the doorman. How many people in his position do you think currently have access to a human coach?
My best guess would be zero, give or take. The dream of the democratisation of coaching remains impossible when humans are involved, for two reasons. Firstly, there aren’t enough human coaches. The highest estimates of the number of coaches globally would put the number well under half a million. How are they meant to serve a global population of several billion? Secondly, humans are inherently expensive, preventing adoption at serious scale.
The introduction of AI coaching makes coaching more accessible, and that should be something coaches are in support of. We should also be in support of maintaining, and increasing, the quality of coaching in all its forms.
AI coaching can be helpful in many ways. It can support our reflective practice. It can help coachees in activities such as goal-setting. It can increase our ability to perform high quality data analytics. It can increase efficiency in our management and administration. It can help us reach more people. And, yes, it can even replace the activity of coaching in some situations.
Is it magic? No. It’s a machine. It’s helpful inasmuch as self-serve checkouts are helpful; they can be faster, they can be cheaper…and they can be extremely frustrating.
