Many leaders are currently grappling with the fact that AI-based technologies—such as ChatGPT and similar ones—can be a substitute for many human activities, including those at the managerial level. Therefore, many are pondering the question: What is the managerial mantra required to lead by leveraging artificial intelligence? The answer: Unabashed Excellence.

What is Unabashed Excellence? It's the drive to achieve high professional standards, especially now that the emergence of AI provides an opportunity to do so without reservation. The rise of modern management brought forth professionalism through business schools, advocating ethical standards and fostering professional workplaces globally. Often, this professionalism is rooted in the mastery of managerial principles. These principles are created and taught by a variety of business school professors, and they are developed in close collaboration with executives and leaders. 

Unfortunately, a lot of these ideas have only been applied sparingly due to practical limitations. These limitations may result from the limited time available for decision-making in the corporate world, the need to manage uncertainties, the lack of data and accurate knowledge of the facts, and occasionally even the ignorance of professional principles. 

For example, ordinarily, any job application leads to human resource departments being inundated with resumes of applicants. The HR managers have little time to do an in-depth analysis, as they have to stay on top of regulations, corporate goals, job characteristics, and timelines. Selecting the best candidate to recommend hiring is a decision driven by satisfaction. That is the abundance of information to be analysed leads to information overload. Organisational thinkers have traditionally identified that this leads to satisfaction, whereby managers have to be satisfied with the good-enough, not necessarily the best, choice. In other words, constraints on time availability lead a manager to do a limited analysis of the impact of a job candidate on future organisational performance. While this problem arising out of abundant data is daunting and limiting for humans, it is a boon for AI-based applications. These applications feed on data. So, they can use all the employee data provided. 

Not surprisingly, human resource (HR) managers are leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the quality of people being hired by the organisation and reduce the time required to hire them. 

Indeed, many natural processing algorithms, clustering algorithms, neural networks, and other data mining algorithms help analyse the resumes to assess applicants’ competency or personality and even predict (often quite accurately) their impacts on the organisation’s future. The pursuit of Unabashed Excellence determines that AI is used by the HR manager to be the best they can be. That is, in the age of AI, a manager has to pursue Unabashed Excellence. To do so, an HR manager may aspire to evolve into the best version of herself/himself. 

So, what does this involve? It means excelling in the managerial principles they've acquired and actively fostering the exploration and creation of new principles that lead to hiring the best employees. Likewise, a product developer might innovate fresh approaches to crafting exceptional products or services, while a financial manager could excel in areas like investment strategies or asset valuation.

The managerial mantra can empower managers to tap into the full potential of AI. However, a lot of work is required to create the culture to do so. A new breed of digital organisations is poised to emerge, shaped by managers dedicated to cultivating an ethos of Unabashed Excellence rooted in professional ethics. This culture will serve as the conduit for harnessing the capabilities of AI-based technologies. This managerial mantra holds immense significance, not just for managers but also for policymakers and leaders.