🤖 AI Didn’t Kill the Analyst Role—Yet. It Killed the Illusion That Grunt Work Was Training. I watched a 25-year-old analyst identify a $1 million revenue hole that our AI had missed. Took him 10 minutes. The AI had the data, flawless formatting, and zero judgment. (I know we need better prompts :) That’s the real story. Not the Bisnow article (Link Below) about faster decks and cleaner spreadsheets. AI didn’t destroy apprenticeship. It exposed how flimsy it already was. For decades, we told ourselves that entry-level analysts “learned by doing.” In reality, most just got stuck cleaning data, formatting pitch decks, and praying someone reviewed their work. Feedback was inconsistent. Context was rare. Judgment? Almost never trained. I've hired 16+ analysts over 30 years. The ones who thrived weren't the best Excel jockeys—they were the ones who asked why the numbers didn't make sense. Now that AI handles the grunt work, the myth falls apart. So the question becomes: How do we train judgment when the task that used to “build it” is automated? You can’t wing this. You need a system. Not a training department—just smarter habits. Here’s what that could look like: Use AI outputs like first drafts—and redline them. Treat AI like a junior analyst. Sit with your new hire and walk through what the AI got wrong or missed—and why it matters. That redline is the real rep. Then, take those misses and refine your prompts. You’re training both the analyst and the machine. Record deal logic as it happens. Next time you kill a deal, record a 2-5 minute voice memo explaining why. Send it to your team. That’s worth more than 100 Excel tutorials. Use real failed deals, not hypotheticals. Give new hires last year’s dead deals. Let them analyze with AI. Then show them what actually killed the deal. Pattern recognition beats hypotheticals. Make training bite-sized and intentional. This doesn’t require expensive training programs. It requires intentional moments when judgment is actually on display. Make sure you test them on it! The testing effect is real. Training without testing is worthless. Clients aren't paying for Excel mastery anymore. They're paying for insight. This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about replacing a broken system with a better one. Because if AI becomes the baseline, The firms that figure this out will steal talent from everyone else. https://lnkd.in/eTKRXkWv