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Recently, I spoke with a head of HR for a tech company who asked: \u201cAre you hearing of other organizations eliminating the manager role? Our CEO thinks they won\u2019t be needed in the future because of AI, because the future is self-managing teams.\u201d Aside from the obvious point that CEOs saying this may be talking themselves<\/em> out of a job, it\u2019s not a rare question at all.<\/p>\n There’s even a name for this\u2014the \u201cGreat Flattening\u201d\u2014and it’s everywhere. Some 41% of employees say their companies trimmed management layers last year, according to Korn Ferry’s<\/a> survey of 15,000 professionals worldwide. Middle managers accounted for more than 31%<\/a> of all layoffs in 2023. And it’s not likely to stop, but to accelerate instead: Gartner predicts<\/a> that through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structure, eliminating over half of their middle management positions.<\/p>\n I get the appeal. Layers of management are expensive, and bad managers do exist. And if AI can take the notes, draft the goals, schedule the one-on-ones, and flag the underperformers in a dashboard, what exactly<\/em> is the human in the middle for?<\/p>\n {“blockType”:”mv-promo-block”,”data”:{“imageDesktopUrl”:”https:\\\/\\\/images.fastcompany.com\\\/image\\\/upload\\\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\\\/wp-cms-2\\\/2026\\\/01\\\/i-169-Ashley-Herd.jpg”,”imageMobileUrl”:”https:\\\/\\\/images.fastcompany.com\\\/image\\\/upload\\\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\\\/wp-cms-2\\\/2026\\\/01\\\/i-11-Ashley-Herd.jpg”,”eyebrow”:””,”headline”:”\\u003Cem\\u003EThe Manager Method\\u003C\\\/em\\u003E”,”dek”:”Want practical leadership development training that actually sticks? Visit managermethod.com to learn more and order Ashley Herd\u2019s book, \\u003Cem\\u003EThe Manager Method\\u003C\\\/em\\u003E.”,”subhed”:””,”description”:””,”ctaText”:”Learn More”,”ctaUrl”:”http:\\\/\\\/managermethod.com”,”theme”:{“bg”:”#2b2d30″,”text”:”#ffffff”,”eyebrow”:”#9aa2aa”,”subhed”:”#ffffff”,”buttonBg”:”#3b3f46″,”buttonHoverBg”:”#3b3f46″,”buttonText”:”#ffffff”},”imageDesktopId”:91478992,”imageMobileId”:91478994,”shareable”:false,”slug”:””,”wpCssClasses”:””}}<\/p>\n Here’s what I’d say to that CEO, having spent years as an employment lawyer cleaning up the messes that bad management creates, and also in HR roles watching what great management actually produces: The question isn’t whether we need managers. It’s whether we’re willing to admit how much value they bring, and the weight they’re already carrying.<\/p>\n Gallup\u2019s research<\/a> has one finding that every CEO should have taped to their monitor: Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units.<\/p>\n Seventy percent<\/em>. It\u2019s not perks, or even words that a CEO says in an all-hands. It\u2019s the person your team member reports to that controls the vast majority of how much effort they choose to put into their work.<\/p>\n And engagement isn’t a soft metric. Gallup has linked it to customer ratings, profitability, productivity, quality, turnover, absenteeism, theft, and safety incidents. Everything an executive actually cares about runs through the manager layer. So when a CEO asks, \u201cDo we even need managers?,\u201d what they’re really asking is: \u201cCan we cut 70% of the variance in our results and hope it goes the right way?\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a big bet.<\/p>\n We’ve run this experiment before. Companies have tried this, with different names: flat structures, Holacracy, \u201cself-management.\u201d Over a decade ago, Zappos famously eliminated the manager role<\/a> and offered employees the opportunity to stay or take a buyout. Within a year, 210 staff (14%) of their workforce took the buyout\u2014but only 20 of those were managers, meaning that 190 individual contributors voluntarily decided to leave. And in the years after, Zappos ran into \u201cbig challenges\u201d<\/a> and brought managers back. Medium, another early adopter of the same self-management model, later abandoned it<\/a> when the system started taxing its team\u2019s effectiveness and sense of connection.<\/p>\n The pattern is almost always the same. When you remove the manager, you don’t remove management<\/em>. You just redistribute it. And the data’s now catching up to that: After flattening, senior executives are absorbing more direct reports and operational tasks, making the humans doing the jobs question their ability to actually do those jobs.<\/p>\n The work didn’t disappear\u2014but the accountability and coaching did. High-potential employees aren’t learning how to make tough calls anymore\u2014and the leadership crisis from that won’t show up until about two years after the cuts.<\/p>\n In the AI version of this fantasy, it’s worse. Because now the \u201cmanager\u201d is a dashboard. Your performance is scored, and any feedback is a summary.<\/p>\n I’ve sat in\u2014and heard about\u2014enough exit interviews to tell you what employees actually say when they leave: \u201cNobody told me what was expected.\u201d \u201cI didn’t feel like I mattered.\u201d \u201cI had no idea if I was doing a good job or about to get fired.\u201d None of those get solved by an algorithm. They get solved by a human who knows your name, your pet\u2019s name, and what you’re trying to build, in this job and your career.<\/p>\n Org charts and spreadsheets don\u2019t show what actually leads to engagement.<\/p>\n The high performer who used to stay late just returned from maternity leave. She\u2019s nursing in the parking lot between meetings and is convinced she\u2019s now failing at her job and<\/em> being a mom.<\/p>\n The team member who received not-so-great biopsy results for his mother last Tuesday didn’t share the news with you. He just showed up at 9 a.m. Zoom meeting with his camera off.<\/p>\n The team member who\u2019s been quiet lately is trying to hold it together because her closest work friend just got laid off. And she\u2019s balancing the guilt of still having a job with the stress of being expected to do the job of two people now.<\/p>\n You\u2019re a real part of these people’s lives. Not in a saccharine, \u201cwe’re a family here\u201d way. (As an employment lawyer, I’d highly encourage you not<\/em> to say that.) But in the actual, measurable sense that how you handle a 30-second conversation will affect whether they sleep tonight\u2014and the work they do all year.<\/p>\n That is not a job for artificial intelligence, nor a job someone can do alone.<\/p>\n I know what matters most in a boardroom, so let me translate.<\/p>\n A manager who can read the room and have the hard conversation prevents the lawsuit. (I\u2019ve seen countless lawsuits that started with: \u201cWell, nobody ever actually told her that her performance was a problem.\u201d)<\/p>\n A manager who gives clear feedback prevents the regretted attrition. The real-talk version is a human thinking, \u201cMy boss is great\u2014why would I ever leave?\u201d Now picture the opposite: the person whose manager never showed up to their one-on-one, so they spent that time updating their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 instead. The cost of replacing an employee runs anywhere from half to two times their salary, depending on the role. Multiply that by the turnover a disengaged\u2014aka r\u00e9sum\u00e9-updating<\/em>\u2014team produces, and the \u201cexpensive middle layer\u201d pays for itself before lunch.<\/p>\nThe number nobody can argue with<\/h2>\n
Where the work actually goes<\/h2>\n
What human team members actually go through<\/h2>\n
The business case people actually need<\/h2>\n