Hi Reader,

Welcome to the 12th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here).

I write about transforming ICs into Impact Contributors.

And today, we're talking about why management skills are no longer optional for anyone.

Let's get into it.

3 Things for Work (in L&D)

1. To Thrive in the AI Era, Companies Need Agent Managers (HBR)

• A new role is emerging: the agent manager. Someone who orchestrates how AI agents learn, collaborate, and operate alongside humans. Salesforce reports its Agentforce platform now resolves 74% of inbound support cases autonomously. The skills required? Systems thinking, workflow design, and prompt craftsmanship. Those are management skills with a new label
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 9 min read

2. Human Capabilities Are at the Heart of High-Performing Teams (Deloitte)

• Nearly 1,400 professionals surveyed. The finding: organizations spend 93% of AI budgets on technology and just 7% on people. Yet the actual differentiator between high-performing and average teams? Curiosity, emotional intelligence, and collaborative thinking.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 15 min read

3. Management as AI Superpower (Ethan Mollick)

• Wharton professor Ethan Mollick gave executive MBA students four days to create a startup from scratch using AI. The students who thrived weren't the most technical. They were the ones who already knew how to manage. His conclusion: "The people who thrive will be the ones who know what good looks like and can explain it clearly enough that even an AI can deliver it." That's delegation. That's management.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 8 min read

2 Things for Life

1. This Alan Watts Lecture About Destiny Will Give You Goosebumps​

• The core idea: stop trying to steer everything. The metaphor is judo. Go with the force instead of against it. I keep coming back to this one when I catch myself gripping too tightly.

2. 35 Health Tips From Experts That Will Help You Live Better (NYT)

• Three stuck with me: protect your hearing now (damage is irreversible and cumulative), practice diaphragmatic breathing (it's the simplest intervention for stress I've found), and stay curious (it turns out curiosity is good for your body, not just your brain!).

1 Idea from Me

Your ICs are already managers. They just don't know it yet.

Every time someone on your team delegates work to an AI agent, they're doing management. Framing the problem. Setting context. Defining what "done" looks like. Checking the output. Pushing back when it misses the mark.

That's delegation. Feedback. Quality control. The same capabilities we've been teaching managers for decades.

I sat down recently and mapped five core management skills against AI interactions:

Same skills. Different medium.

TalentLMS found that 56% of L&D leaders are leaning into human skills while 44% prioritize AI fluency. But that split is artificial. Problem framing is problem framing, whether you're directing a person or an agent.

I shared this mapping with an L&D leader at a 3,000-person company. She'd been independently researching management skills in an agentic world. When I said "ICs are becoming managers," she stopped.

"I hadn't thought about it like that."

She owned both IC and manager development. She'd just never connected them.

This is the part that should make L&D leaders pay attention. Right now, most companies fund two separate programs: one labeled "AI readiness" and one labeled "leadership capability." Two vendors. Two budgets. Two sets of workshops teaching the same underlying skill.

The companies that figure this out first won't just develop better people. They'll do it at half the cost.

So here's the question worth sitting with: Is your 2026 development budget funding one capability model, or two?

That's it for this week. Enjoy your Sunday!

I'll be back in two weeks ✌️

Andrew

P.S. 👉 If you're rethinking how IC development and AI readiness connect, hit reply. I'm working on a framework for this and would love to compare notes.