Will my job still exist in three years?

Wednesday afternoon, a meeting room in a mid-sized company in Bavaria. Workshop title: „Integrating AI into our daily work.“

The head of IT has prepared eighteen slides. Three use cases, one pilot project. All well thought through. Twelve people in the room, heads nodding, the right questions asked: Which tool? Who runs the training? Starting when?

At the end the managing director says: „So we agree. We start in June.“ Everyone nods. Workshop over.

During the coffee break a team lead is standing next to me. Late forties. Stirring his coffee. Says nothing. Then, quietly:

„Ralf, will my job still exist in three years?“

He does not look at me. He looks into his coffee.

This man has just spent sixty minutes in that workshop without asking this question once. Not because it only occurred to him now. Because you do not ask something like that in front of twelve colleagues and the managing director. Because you do not want to be the one who is afraid.

That is the moment that stays with me. Not which tool is best. The question that gets asked in the coffee break because it has no place in the meeting.

I see this in almost every company right now. The strategy says AI. The presentation says AI. But people are carrying a question around with them that nobody says out loud: What does this mean for ME? My daily work. My competence. My worth.

The dangerous part is not the fear. Fear is a normal reaction to change you cannot yet assess. The dangerous part is the silence. Teams that do not talk about their uncertainty cannot shape change. They endure it.

What I told him: your question is not weak. It is the smartest question anyone could have asked in that room today.

Nobody can tell you what your job will look like in three years. Anyone who claims otherwise is selling you something. But the capabilities that made you valuable over twenty years — experience, judgement, relationships, context — do not disappear because of AI. They become more important once routine falls away and what really counts is what remains.

Talk to your boss. Not about tools. About your question.

Two weeks later the managing director wrote to me. She had called a team meeting with a single question: „What is really on your mind when you think about AI?“ It became the most honest meeting in years.

People have much of what they need to shape this change. What is often missing is not a better tool. It is permission to be uncertain — and to come along anyway.

My question to you: is there a space in your organisation where people can honestly say what AI really triggers — or do the real conversations happen at your coffee machine too?

Lead yourself, and everything else follows.
— Ralf