Artificial Idea | AI careers · practical prompts · no hype Thursday, February 5, 2026 · Issue #53 · Prompt Tutorial
The repositioning stack
How to use AI to future-proof your job description before your next review cycle
The Block criteria are not Block-specific. They are the criteria every organisation is applying or will apply as AI tool reliability reaches the threshold that makes the trade-off visible. Here is how to assess where you sit and what to do about it.
Issue #52 identified the three criteria Block applied when deciding which roles to eliminate and which to retain: process automatability, legal and regulatory accountability, and skill scarcity. It established that those criteria are not unique to Block, that they are the same criteria this newsletter has been describing since Issue #3 as the primary drivers of AI-driven displacement, and that the Block case makes them concrete in a way that aggregate data cannot.
This issue is the application of those criteria to your specific role. Not in the abstract. In the specific, honest, professionally uncomfortable way that produces a clear picture of where you currently sit on the automatability spectrum and what the most effective repositioning looks like from where you stand.
The five prompts below build that picture and the repositioning plan that follows from it. They are designed to be run in sequence and to produce outputs that feed into each other, so the plan that emerges at the end is grounded in the honest assessment at the beginning rather than in the aspirational self-image that most role-redesign exercises produce.
The prerequisite: honesty about the baseline
Before the prompts, one observation about how to use them that determines whether they produce something useful or something comfortable.
The Block restructuring eliminated roles whose occupants, in many cases, did not believe their roles were at risk until the announcement. The gap between their self-assessment and the organisation's assessment was not primarily a gap in information. It was a gap in honesty about what their role primarily consisted of when viewed from the outside rather than from the inside.
From the inside, most roles feel more judgment-intensive, more creative, and more relationship-dependent than they look from the outside. The transaction processor who handled the exceptions, the customer support tier two agent who managed the genuinely complex cases, the coordination manager who exercised real judgment about resource allocation: each of these professionals experienced their role as requiring genuine skill and judgment. Each was correct about the skill their role required. What the Block restructuring assessed was not whether skill was required but whether that skill was the primary driver of the role's value or a component of a role whose primary driver was high-volume execution of a process that AI tools could now handle.
Run the prompts below with the outside view in mind, not the inside one. The outside view is the one that determines outcomes.
Prompt 1: The automatability audit
The problem it solves: establishing precisely where your role sits on the automatability spectrum using the three Block criteria rather than a generic assessment of whether your job feels at risk.
You are an organisational design specialist
applying the specific criteria used in
AI-driven restructuring decisions to
assess the automatability profile of
my professional role.
The three criteria I am asking you to apply:
1. Process automatability: whether the role's
primary function is the execution of
well-defined, high-volume, rules-based
processes that AI tools can now perform reliably
2. Legal and regulatory accountability: whether
the role carries accountability requirements
that regulatory frameworks mandate must
be held by a human professional
3. Skill scarcity: whether the role requires
capabilities so rare in the labour market
that replacing a departing professional
would be costly and slow enough to outweigh
the efficiency gain from reducing the role
My role and what I actually do day to day:
[describe honestly, including the tasks that
consume the most time, the decisions I make,
the relationships I manage, and the outputs
I produce]
My industry and organisational context:
[describe the sector, the organisation's
size and AI adoption stage, and the
regulatory environment relevant to my function]
Please assess my role against each criterion:
1. Process automatability: what proportion
of my role's primary functions are
high-volume, rules-based processes that
current AI tools can perform reliably,
and what proportion require genuine
judgment, creativity, or contextual
interpretation that AI cannot currently replicate
2. Legal and regulatory accountability:
which specific decisions or outputs
in my role carry accountability requirements
that regulatory frameworks in my sector
mandate must be held by a human, and
how central are those requirements to
the overall value the role provides
3. Skill scarcity: how rare are the
specific capabilities my role requires
in the current labour market, and
what would it cost my organisation
in time, money, and competitive risk
to replace me if I left tomorrow
Then produce an overall assessment:
where does my role sit on the automatability
spectrum relative to the roles eliminated
and retained in the Block restructuring,
and what is the most honest characterisation
of my current position?
Be direct. A comfortable assessment
is not a useful one.
The instruction to be direct and that a comfortable assessment is not a useful one is the constraint that makes this prompt worth running. The natural tendency of any professional assessment is toward the conclusion that the professional is safe, because the alternative is too uncomfortable to dwell on without a plan for addressing it. This prompt is designed to produce the honest assessment that makes a real plan possible.
Prompt 2: The role decomposer
The problem it solves: breaking your role into its component parts at the task level and assessing each component separately, because the overall automatability profile of a role is almost always more nuanced than a single assessment captures.
You are helping me decompose my professional
role into its component tasks and assess
each component against the automatability
criteria established in my previous assessment.
My overall role assessment: [from Prompt 1]
My role broken down by the tasks and
responsibilities that consume my time:
[list every significant recurring task
and responsibility, with an honest estimate
of what proportion of your week each consumes]
For each task or responsibility, please assess:
1. Its automatability level: high, moderate,
or low, with a specific reason grounded
in the current capability of AI tools
rather than in a general sense of
whether it feels like work a machine could do
2. Its current proportion of my role:
roughly what percentage of my professional
value is currently concentrated in
this task or responsibility
3. Its trajectory: is AI tool capability
in this area improving rapidly, slowly,
or not at all, and what does that
trajectory mean for the automatability
assessment in twelve to twenty-four months
Then produce:
4. A map of where my professional value
is currently concentrated versus where
it should be concentrated to be resilient
over the next two years
5. The single task or responsibility that
represents the largest misalignment
between where my time currently goes
and where my value is most durable
The decomposition should be specific enough
that each task is identifiable rather than
described in category language that obscures
the actual level of automatability.
Point five, the single largest misalignment between where time goes and where value is durable, is the output that most directly determines what the repositioning plan that follows needs to prioritise. Most professionals have one function that consumes a disproportionate amount of their week relative to its contribution to their long-term professional value. Identifying it specifically is the starting point for changing it deliberately.
Prompt 3: The repositioning designer
The problem it solves: designing a specific repositioning of your role toward higher-value, lower-automatability activity that is achievable within your current organisational context rather than requiring a role change or external move.
You are an organisational design specialist
helping me design a specific repositioning
of my professional role toward activity
that is more resilient to AI-driven
restructuring while remaining achievable
within my current organisational context.
My automatability audit: [from Prompt 1]
My role decomposition and value map: [from Prompt 2]
My organisational context: [describe your
organisation's current priorities, the
direction your function is heading,
and the degree of latitude you have
to redesign your own role]
My professional capabilities and development:
[describe what you are genuinely good at
and what you have been building through
your AI capability development]
Please design a repositioning that:
1. Identifies the two or three highest-value,
lowest-automatability activities available
to me within my current role and organisation
that I am currently underinvesting in
2. Identifies the high-automatability activities
currently consuming my time that could
be reduced, delegated, or AI-assisted
without reducing my contribution to
the organisation's most important priorities
3. Proposes a specific reallocation of my
professional time and attention over
the next ninety days that shifts the
balance toward the activities identified
in point one
4. Identifies the organisational permission
or support I would need to make this
reallocation sustainable rather than
a personal experiment that reverts
when pressure increases
5. Identifies the risk of this repositioning:
what I would be giving up or moving away
from, and whether that trade-off is
sound given my specific situation
The repositioning should be ambitious enough
to change my automatability profile meaningfully
and achievable enough that I can begin
implementing it next week rather than
after a lengthy internal negotiation.
Point four, the organisational permission or support required, is the component most repositioning plans omit and most commonly need. Individual role redesign that occurs without the knowledge or support of the manager and organisation it is happening inside is personal development. Role redesign that occurs with explicit organisational endorsement is career development. The difference is significant, and the path from one to the other is the conversation that Prompt 4 addresses.
Prompt 4: The manager conversation builder
The problem it solves: preparing for the specific conversation with your manager that converts your repositioning plan from a personal intention into an organisationally endorsed direction, which is the step that determines whether the repositioning produces career recognition or just personal efficiency.
You are helping me prepare for a conversation
with my manager about repositioning my role
toward higher-value activity in response
to the AI transition in my function.
My repositioning plan: [from Prompt 3]
My manager's context: [their role, their
current priorities, what they care about
most in my function, and their current
understanding of AI's impact on our work]
The organisational context: [any relevant
restructuring discussions, performance
review cycles, or strategic initiatives
that make this conversation timely or complicated]
What I want from this conversation:
[explicit endorsement, informal support,
resource allocation, expanded scope,
or something else specific]
Please prepare:
1. The framing for this conversation that
positions my repositioning as serving
the organisation's priorities rather
than my personal career interests,
even though it serves both
2. The specific proposal I will make:
what I am asking to spend more time on,
what I am proposing to spend less time on,
and why the trade-off serves the team's
most important objectives
3. The two or three objections my manager
is most likely to raise and the specific
response to each that is honest rather
than defensive
4. The question I will ask my manager
that invites their input into the
repositioning rather than presenting
it as a fait accompli, making them
a co-designer rather than an approver
5. The specific outcome I will propose
to review at ninety days: a concrete
measure of whether the repositioning
is producing the value I have proposed
it will produce
The conversation should feel like a
strategic discussion about how to get
the most value from my capabilities
in the current environment, not like
a request for permission to change
how I spend my time.
Point four, the question that invites the manager's input rather than their approval, is the framing distinction that most changes how this conversation lands. Managers who are presented with a completed plan and asked to approve it are in a different psychological position from managers who are invited to co-design a direction with a professional who has done serious thinking about the options. The former produces a transaction. The latter produces an alliance, and the alliance is what makes the repositioning sustainable rather than provisional.
Prompt 5: The ninety-day repositioning tracker
The problem it solves: tracking whether the repositioning is actually happening rather than reverting to previous patterns under the pressure of the week's immediate demands, which is the most common failure mode for role redesign efforts at any level.
You are helping me design a tracking
system for my ninety-day role repositioning
that is simple enough to maintain under
pressure and specific enough to tell me
whether the repositioning is working.
My repositioning plan: [from Prompt 3]
The specific reallocation of time I have committed to:
[describe the activities increasing and decreasing]
My manager conversation outcome: [from Prompt 4]
The ninety-day review I have proposed: [from Prompt 4]
Please design a tracking system that:
1. Captures the weekly time allocation
across the high-value and high-automatability
activities identified in my role decomposition,
in a format that takes less than five minutes
per week to complete
2. Identifies the leading indicators that
will tell me the repositioning is working
before the ninety-day review, the early
signals that the higher-value activities
are gaining traction and the high-automatability
ones are genuinely reducing
3. Identifies the warning signs that the
repositioning is reverting, the specific
patterns that indicate the week's pressure
is crowding out the deliberate reallocation
4. Produces a thirty-day checkpoint assessment
format that I can complete in fifteen minutes
and that gives me an honest picture of
whether I am on track for the ninety-day
review commitment
5. Identifies the single most important
thing to protect when the week is
at its most demanding: the activity
that, if consistently protected,
most determines whether the repositioning
succeeds or reverts
The tracking system should be designed
for a professional whose weeks are
genuinely demanding and who will not
maintain a complex system under pressure.
Simplicity is not a concession.
It is the design requirement that
makes the system work rather than
look good in the first week and
disappear by the third.
The closing instruction about simplicity being a design requirement rather than a concession is the principle that most tracking systems violate. Complex tracking systems produce excellent data for the two weeks they are maintained before the week's demands make maintenance feel like an additional burden rather than a useful practice. Simple systems maintained consistently produce less perfect data and significantly more useful developmental outcomes.
The framework as a whole
Five prompts. An honest assessment of where you currently sit on the automatability spectrum. A decomposition of your role that identifies the specific misalignment between where your time goes and where your value is durable. A repositioning design that is ambitious enough to change the profile and achievable enough to begin next week. A manager conversation that converts the personal intention into an organisational direction. A tracking system that keeps the repositioning on course when the week pushes back.
The Block case made the stakes concrete. This framework makes the response specific. The distance between where you currently sit and where you need to be is measurable rather than vague, and measurable distances have plans attached to them.
The professionals who run this framework honestly and act on what it produces are the ones who are designing their side of the restructuring trade-off rather than waiting for the organisation to design it for them. That is not a guarantee of the outcome. It is the best available influence over it.
Monday we are examining something the Block layoffs surfaced that did not receive enough attention in the coverage: the specific profile of the professionals who were retained and what they had done differently in the eighteen months before the announcement that made them the ones the organisation chose to keep. It is not the profile most people would predict, and understanding it changes what the next eighteen months should look like for the professionals reading this.
The retained profile is the most useful data point in the entire Block story. Monday covers it in full.
— Team Artificial Idea
