Role Redesign For Ai

---
name: role-redesign-for-ai
description: "Redesign a job role that AI now does a large part of — deliberately, instead of quietly expecting the same headcount to absorb 140% output. Use when AI has changed what a role spends time on, when writing a revised role charter or job description post-AI, when a team asks 'what is my job now', or when planning capacity after AI adoption. Produces a role redesign: the task inventory before/after, the redefined core of the role, new expectations and metrics, and the growth-path implications. For hiring rubrics use hiring-rubric; for org-wide skills planning use ai-upskilling or career-ladder-map."
---

# Role Redesign For AI Skill

When AI absorbs 40% of a role's tasks, orgs default to the worst option: say nothing, and let expectations quietly inflate until the human is doing their old job *plus* supervising the machine, evaluated by standards from neither. This skill makes the redesign explicit — what the role stops doing, what it now owns, and what "good" means after the shift.

## What This Skill Produces

- A **task inventory, before/after**: what AI took, what it created, what stayed human — with hours
- The **redefined core**: the role's new centre of gravity, written as a charter
- **New expectations & metrics**: what performance means now (and which old metrics are dead)
- **Level and growth-path implications** — including the junior-pipeline problem, faced honestly

## Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):
- **The role today**: title, level, the real task list (or the JD plus what the JD lies about)
- **What AI actually absorbed** — observed, not vendor-promised: which tasks, how completely, with what verification burden
- **The person/team context**: one person or a team of eight? tenure mix? current performance framework?
- **The org's honest intent**: same headcount doing more? fewer people? higher-value work? (The redesign differs; refusing to pick is itself the problem — flag it.)

## Redesign Method

1. **Inventory tasks, not titles.** List the role's tasks with weekly hours. Mark each: **AI-absorbed** (machine does it, human spot-checks) · **AI-assisted** (human does it faster) · **AI-created** (new work: prompting, verifying, correcting, supervising agents) · **Human-core** (judgment, relationships, accountability, taste). The AI-created column is the one orgs forget — verification is work, and it's in this role now.
2. **Balance the hours honestly.** Old role = 40h. Absorbed −12h, assisted −6h, created +8h → 10h of genuine capacity. The redesign decides where those hours go *on purpose*: deeper human-core work, wider scope, or reduced load. Unallocated capacity becomes silent expectation inflation within a quarter.
3. **Redefine the core.** The role's new centre is what only it can be accountable for. Write the charter in outcomes: what this role *owns* (decisions, quality bars, relationships), what it *supervises* (the AI-done work — with the verification standard stated), what it *no longer does* (named, so nobody performs it out of habit or fear).
4. **Rewrite the metrics.** Kill throughput metrics the machine now drives (tickets closed, words shipped, drafts produced) — a human evaluated on machine output is being evaluated on prompt luck. New metrics live where the human is: judgment quality (error catch rate on AI output, decision outcomes), the human-core outcomes, and supervision health. Pair with [`ai-assisted-performance-review`](../ai-assisted-performance-review/SKILL.md) for the review conversation itself.
5. **Face the ladder problem.** If AI absorbed the tasks juniors learned on, the pipeline to senior judgment is cut. The redesign states how the next cohort develops: deliberate reps on AI-done tasks (inefficient on purpose), verification apprenticeships, or a redesigned junior role — "we'll figure it out" is how professions hollow out.
6. **Plan the conversation.** The redesign lands as a change to someone's identity, not their task list. The rollout: the draft is *discussed with the people in the role before it's announced*, the "no longer does" list is framed as release not demotion, and comp/level implications are stated in the same meeting they're wondered about.

## Output Format

### Role Redesign: [title] — post-AI charter

**Intent (stated):** [more output / fewer people / higher-value work — the org's actual answer]

**Task inventory**
| Task | Hrs before | Status | Hrs after | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
*(with the AI-created verification/supervision rows present)*

**Capacity math:** [freed hours → where they were deliberately allocated]

**The new charter:** Owns: […] · Supervises (with verification standard): […] · No longer does: […]

**Metrics:** [dead metrics, named as dead · new metrics with definitions]

**Ladder implications:** [how juniors now develop the judgment this role's seniors have]

**Rollout:** [discussion-before-announcement plan · the comp/level statement · review date for the charter itself]

## Quality Checks

- [ ] The AI-created work (verification, supervision) appears in the inventory with hours
- [ ] Freed capacity is explicitly allocated — no silent 140% expectation
- [ ] At least one legacy throughput metric is explicitly killed
- [ ] The "no longer does" list is concrete enough that someone could stop doing those things tomorrow
- [ ] The junior-pipeline question is answered, not deferred
- [ ] The org's intent (headcount vs scope) is stated in the document

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not redesign the role without the people in it — a charter discovered in a reorg deck creates the resistance it deserved
- [ ] Do not keep old throughput metrics "for continuity" — they now measure the vendor, not the human
- [ ] Do not treat verification as slack time — reviewing machine output at quality is skilled work with hours
- [ ] Do not write "focus on higher-value work" without naming the work — that phrase is where redesigns go to die
- [ ] Do not skip the intent question — a redesign that won't say whether headcount changes will be read as concealing it, correctly