Are you picking up the tool?!

Markus Mazur can well imagine that on one or two construction sites someone has shouted: "Are you actually going to pick up the tool?"

This article is part of the special column: "Workbench + Change"

No tradesman would dream of driving a long row of screws by hand when a cordless screwdriver is lying right next to him. Not because he's forgotten his craft, but because he's using a tool that makes the job easier. It wasn't always like this. The cordless screwdriver was once new, too. Presumably, there were people who considered the manual screwdriver more reliable. They said that doing it by hand was more precise, or that they really didn't need this electric thing .

Hardly anyone discusses this anymore.

Tools are an essential part of any trade. Cordless screwdrivers, jigsaws, and drills make work faster, more precise, and less strenuous. They don't replace the expert's profession.

Why do we view digital tools so differently? Take, for example, repetitive office tasks: transferring timesheets, creating invoices, checking inventory, placing orders, coordinating appointments. In smaller businesses, a colleague usually handles these tasks. Sometimes, even the owner sits at their desk after hours.

Many of these tasks are still done with a screwdriver today: by hand, step by step, and over and over again. There's a cordless screwdriver!

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Automation. Sometimes it involves artificial intelligence, sometimes it's not needed at all. Often, a clean digital process is sufficient: working hours are recorded directly. Consumed materials are automatically assigned to the order. Quotes and invoices are generated from the existing data. Inventory monitoring provides timely notification when items are missing.

Okay, time savings. But what happens to the people who did this work before?

Perhaps exactly the right thing will happen.

The colleague in the office no longer has to spend hours transcribing illegible timesheets. Instead, she can call a customer whose invoice is still outstanding. She can answer the phone when someone urgently needs a service appointment. She can listen, ask questions, and find a solution that doesn't fit into a standardized form. More room for customer focus.

Especially with the hype surrounding AI, many people are currently in a huge misunderstanding.

There's an attempt to use artificial intelligence to solve precisely the most complex tasks: conducting difficult conversations, advising customers, or making decisions that require experience, empathy, and responsibility. We should start elsewhere. Not with tasks that demand special human qualities, but with those that prevent people from being human and not machines every single day.

The cordless drill hasn't made the carpenter redundant. It challenges him to integrate the new tool into his workflow and use it to his advantage . I can easily imagine that on one or two construction sites, someone has already shouted: "Are you actually using that tool?"

A bi-weekly column by Daniel-John Riedl and Markus Mazur

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