The First Draft Illusion

Today's graduates and juniors aren't starting from zero - they're starting from "good enough." And "good enough" is the enemy of excellence. In this blog, Heft Director Emily Makere Broadmore discusses the emerging inequity between senior experts and young people in the workforce.  

When I began my communications career, a blank page was terrifying but honest. You knew precisely where you stood: at the beginning. Today's young professionals face a different challenge: the first draft illusion. 

With AI, they begin with what appears to be complete content. And I believe this is far more problematic than starting from scratch, because it creates a false sense of security that undermines what a blank page forces – which is critical thinking and creativity. 

For instance, we all know that an AI can produce a structurally sound press release if it is provided the background materials, or the skeleton of a communications strategy in seconds. The output looks professional, follows conventions, and contains no obvious errors. But to an experienced communicator, these AI-generated materials lack strategic insight, creative spark, and the nuanced understanding that comes from experience. In essence, they lack the input of human creative intelligence.  

Here's the problem: young professionals don't yet know what they don't know.  

Without years of experience, which results in them knowing what an excellent result looks like, they generally don’t recognise the AI output they have produced is merely adequate. And they haven’t the experience to provide the human input to create an excellent AI generated output.  

The skills of our seasoned professionals came through years of writing, revising, receiving feedback, and learning from failure. If we allow AI to short-circuit this development process, we risk creating a generation of communications professionals who can prompt AI but cannot think critically or creatively themselves. 

The flow on impact of young people not developing, and relying on AI to create poor results, is that juniors will be seen as entirely unnecessary within some teams. Some organisations in the US have already stopped hiring juniors altogether. I was at an industry event recently when a US speaker on the panel explained the attitude for many of the organisations is “we’ll just let other people train the juniors, then we will steal them later.” 

In essence – senior people can leverage AI in order to cut out the need to mentor and train a young person.  

The ethical quandary in this is that the hiring, mentoring and training of juniors will become an ethics decision for a business, rather than because lower cost young staff provide value of a different kind to a business. Just as the return-to-work argument has included the need to mentor juniors, the adoption of AI will put it on the shoulders of our senior professionals to want to engage in the upskilling of young people. Explaining a task, waiting for the junior to create a first draft (whether that is 100% human or AI generated), taking the time to red pen and explain why the result is not good enough, and waiting again for the revised version. Meanwhile, the senior staff in competing businesses have simply received an excellent first draft back from AI in a matter of minutes.  

So as a leader, what can you do? While roles will evolve and change, there are some things you can do now to start supporting your young people to adopt AI in a way that channels their creative intelligence – the very thing that makes them human and ensures that whether or not they are starting from a blank page, they are applying that valuable skill in their work.  

Download our companion guide: "Developing Critical Intelligence in the AI Era: An approach for leaders" for some practical tips from the Heft website now. 

Emily Makere Broadmore and Lawrence Green, founder of AI Leaders, will be speaking at the Wellington Club on Guiding Communications Through the AI Transition: Redefining the value of communicators in the AI era 

Date: Thursday, May 29th, 8 – 9.30am 

Venue: The Wellington Club 

Cost: free 

RSVP: hello@heft.co.nz