There’s an idea doing the rounds that I keep coming back to. The founder of a platform called BossUp made the point that everyone using AI is effectively becoming a manager – not of people, but of the AI itself. And the more I sit with it, the more I think he’s right. You’re not just opening a tool and pressing go. You’re briefing it, directing it, telling it when it’s gone wrong, and starting again. That’s management. We just don’t call it that yet.
After twenty-odd years in design and communications, I’ve watched a lot of tools arrive promising to change everything. Some did. Most didn’t. AI feels genuinely different – but not always for the reasons people assume.
The briefing problem nobody talks about
The people getting the best out of AI aren’t necessarily the most technically minded. They’re the ones who can communicate clearly, write a decent brief, and articulate what they actually want. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what makes a good client, a good creative director, or a good colleague.
If you’re putting vague prompts in and getting rubbish back, that’s not really an AI problem. It’s a brief problem. Same as it ever was.
The hidden cost of managing AI
Here’s something that doesn’t get said enough: managing AI takes time. Quite a lot of it, actually. The back and forth, the reviewing, the realising it’s gone off in completely the wrong direction, the starting again. I’ve caught myself – more than once – spending longer managing AI on something than it would have taken to just do it myself.
That’s worth sitting with, especially if you’re a creative.
The promise is that AI frees you up to do more of the good stuff – the thinking, the making, the things that drew you to this work in the first place. But if you’re not careful, the managing fills that space instead. You might end up producing more, but doing less of the actual creative thinking that makes the work worth doing. Everyone’s focused on output and efficiency. But what about the quality of thinking behind it? That doesn’t just maintain itself.
Where AI earns its place – and where it doesn’t
The work it genuinely helps with
We use AI at Enigma, and it earns its place in the right contexts. Research, structuring ideas, drafting the functional stuff that doesn’t need a creative touch – that’s where it genuinely adds value and saves time.
The work where your instinct is the point
Where I’d be more cautious is leaning on AI for the work where your taste and experience are what the client is actually paying for. That’s not something AI can replicate. But it is something you can lose the sharpness of if you stop exercising it.
Think of it this way. The best creative directors I’ve known stayed hands-on. They didn’t stop making things just because they were managing people who made things. They kept their eye in. That’s exactly the discipline we need with AI.
Use it well, but stay you
Getting better at managing AI is a real skill, and it’ll matter more as time goes on. But don’t let the managing become the job. Don’t let the tool reshape what you do to the point where the creative thinking gets squeezed out.
Because that’s the part nobody else can do. Not another agency, and not an AI given the perfect prompt. It’s yours. Worth keeping hold of.
If you’re figuring out where AI fits in your own business or creative process, we’re always happy to have that conversation.
