What AI Is Teaching Us About Management

By: Mike Taylor Source: Original URL Type: article

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What AI Is Teaching Us About Management

By Mike Taylor

January 20, 2026

Also True for Humans

Mike Taylor’s column thesis: managing AIs and managing humans require the same techniques. The issues he encounters with AI tools (inconsistency, hallucination, lack of creativity) are the same issues he had managing a 50-person marketing agency.

Key sections:

Prompting belongs in business school: Writing clear instructions is a management skill; MBA programs should teach it
Managers have been vibe coding forever: Most managers give vague direction (“make it better”) and hope — same failure mode as vague AI prompts
The age of the idea guy: AI shifts value to people who generate clear ideas and can evaluate output, not those who execute
Where humans shine: The messy middle: Novel judgment calls, stakeholder politics, ethical gray areas — the things that can’t be reduced to a spec
What comes next: “New Taylorism” — systematic, prompt-driven management becomes standard practice