Everyone wants to kill the middle manager role. The data says don’t do it

Recently, I spoke with a head of HR for a tech company who asked: “Are you hearing of other organizations eliminating the manager role? Our CEO thinks they won’t be needed in the future because of AI, because the future is self-managing teams.” Aside from the obvious point that CEOs saying this may be talking themselves out of a job, it’s not a rare question at all. There’s even a name for this—the “Great Flattening”—and it’s everywhere. Some 41% of employees say their companies t...