Rethinking Ownership in the New Normal of AI Work
2025.20 - Someone praised a document I wrote recently. Instead of pride, I felt unease. I have a feeling I am not alone on this in current times.
You are reading a free post from my newsletter — The Art of Doing Technical Program Management. I write with an aim to demystify the art of technical program management and deliver proven real-world strategies, practical advise and tips, and actionable frameworks to help you level up as a Technical Program Manager.
If you already are a subscriber and found this essay helpful, please share it with your colleagues and network. I am sure others might find it useful as well.
Should I Feel Unease About this?
The first time I went through the promotion cycle at Google, I was asked to submit a promo packet. For many of my current and ex-Googlers, this phrase will sound familiar. A promo packet was a collection of artifacts that backed up your achievements, impact, and leadership. Not just what you said on the promo form but what you actually did, what you could show. Slide decks, program briefs, retrospective write-ups, launch reviews, all meticulously organized to tell the story of why I was ready for the next level.
Back then, I invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into writing these artifacts. They weren’t just paper trails. They were instruments of clarity, for myself and my teams. Writing was how I made sense of messy timelines, aligned teams, and built confidence across stakeholders. It was deep work. Overtime, I developed my own style: bullet-heavy outlines followed by crisp prose, always with clear takeaways and a bias toward action. Writing good became a quiet craft I took pride in.
So, when a PM recently complimented a document I’d written, you’d think I’d be thrilled. In the past, I would’ve let that praise land and maybe even patted myself on the back.
But this time, instead of satisfaction, I felt a flicker of unease. That was a first.
Why?
Because I didn’t really write the document. At least, not in the way I used to.
Here’s what actually happened:
I jotted down a rough outline in ten minutes, mostly high-level points I wanted to make, rough sequencing, maybe a phrase or two I liked.
Then I opened up our internal ChatGPT, dropped in the outline, and asked it to build a structured draft around it. Gave it clear instructions for what I wanted. It did. And it was solid.
I spent another ten minutes cleaning it up; editing for tone, sharpening a few insights, cutting repetition, re-arranging things to match my style and hit send.
The doc was praised. “This is an excellent doc”. Objectively, it worked. Yet it felt hollow somehow. Never have I had this feeling before. I found myself asking a lot of questions:
Could I confidently point to this doc as evidence of my leadership and communication?
Could I submit it in a future promo packet and say, “This was me”?
Or would I always know that I had, in a way, outsourced the craft?
This isn’t just about one document nor am I here to seek pity or such nonsense. Put aside the hype for one second and really think about this. This feeling I have points to a true and real question. It’s about what it means to do the work in an age where tools like AI can dramatically accelerate or even automate many parts of our workflow. Where does contribution begin and end when the means of production are shared with a machine?
So, what does this mean about ownership and the value of our outputs as TPMs?
It means we need to revise our expectations, both of ourselves and of each other, when it comes to what TPMs produce and how we produce it.
Is it more valuable that I carefully curated every word in a document? Or is the real value in whether the document served its purpose which was clarifying decisions, aligning stakeholders, and unblocking execution?
Because even though I didn’t choose every word, everything else was mine: the core ideas, the sequencing of thoughts, the intended impact, the shape of the narrative, the signals I wanted to send to my audience. The AI may have typed the paragraphs, but I still authored the story.
We need to normalize this kind of partnership with AI tools. And it’s not without precedent.
Supreme Court justices have clerks who help write opinions under their direction.
Editors work side-by-side with authors to turn rough manuscripts into coherent books.
Ghostwriters help industry leaders express their ideas and frameworks. In each case, the value isn’t diminished by collaboration but it’s enhanced by it.
If we want widespread adoption of AI tools across our teams and companies, we’ll need to lead this shift not just in how we work, but in how we evaluate work. That means letting go of outdated expectations that value outputs based on effort or authorship alone. Instead, we should embrace and double down on a broader view: one that focuses on outcomes, clarity, and influence.
In this new era, ownership isn’t about who wrote every word. It’s about who shaped the work and whether that work moved the needle.
Don’t be afraid to use these tools.
Leverage them to work faster, think more clearly, and produce better outcomes. Just as we’ve embraced new programming languages, cloud platforms, and agile methodologies, AI is simply the next evolution in how we build and communicate. If we normalize their use, we expand what’s possible for the teams and organizations we support, for ourselves.
As Straker Carryer said in my Microguide on Getting Start With AI Tools, “we need to normalize use of AI. Call it out in the code, in the docs, where ever it’s used.”
Something to think about…
Until next time.
-Aadil