As leaders flatten structures and introduce AI, they face a critical choice: gut the management layer —or elevate it. Well-designed, fully empowered managers amplify performance, culture, and innovation in ways no algorithm ever could.

Leadership Is Still a Human Story

Organizations today are navigating two seismic shifts: delayering and automation. It’s easy to wonder: Do we really need managers?

Especially since many current managers feel more like bureaucrats — Glorified Administrators locked in coordination duty — or Aggregators perpetually shaping the narrative for the level above, rather than true leaders shaping the business and delivering on strategy.

But when leaders thoughtfully define and support managerial roles, managers become one of the most powerful levers — and multipliers — for organizational growth, engagement, and resilience.

Management as a Strategic Lever — Backed by Evidence

The influential HBR/NBER study “Does Management Matter?” by Bloom, Eifert, Mahajan, McKenzie & Roberts proved it does — unequivocally. In Indian textile factories, implementing modern management practices led to:

• 11–17% increase in productivity through better quality, efficiency, and reduced inventory.

• Decentralization of decision-making, empowering middle managers.

• Adoption of data-driven tools to support decisions.

This landmark research underscored that good management practices aren’t just “soft” skills — they’re organizational technology with measurable ROI. In today’s context, the question many leaders are asking is whether these practices can — or should — be delivered by humans, AI, or both.

Just to be sure: Real-World Lessons & Candid Reversals

What better way to test managers’ value than to take them out completely? Zappos famously tried eliminating managers with Holacracy. While visionary, the result was confusion, misalignment, and attrition. Nearly 20% of employees took buyouts, and Zappos ultimately reintroduced more structure.

It’s fair to say Holacracy has largely been a failed experiment as a universal model (it may still work for some cultures) — but it taught valuable lessons about autonomy, clarity, and the limits of structure-lessness. For most organizations, it reinforced why clear roles and strong leadership remain indispensable.

What Great Management Looks Like

When properly designed and resourced, the Professional People Manager role delivers:

• Strategic alignment: Translating vision into clear team actions.

• Culture building: Modeling values, coaching behaviors, fostering belonging.

• Talent development: Creating pipelines of leaders ready to take on more.

• Innovation & collaboration: Breaking silos, connecting people and ideas.

• Coaching & growth: Helping individuals stretch beyond what they thought possible.

This isn’t “extra work.” It is the work — and it pays dividends when leaders treat the role as central to strategy rather than an afterthought.

Carefully review the list above. For AI to replace the professional manager, it would need to do all of these better than a human can. Of course, not all managers live up to this ideal today — and that’s precisely why organizations need to rethink how they select, train, and support managers differently.

AI for Amplification, Not Replacement

AI can — and should — take over administrative drudgery: scheduling, reporting, tracking KPIs. But as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff put it:

“Humans must remain central in the evolution of AI — it should amplify, not replace us.”

Leaders should focus AI investments on enabling managers to spend more time where they add the most value: with people, aligning to strategy, and creating clarity — while cutting stress and wasted effort.

Human managers paired with AI assistants can elevate both the role and the profession.

Advice for Leaders: Redesign, Don’t Just Remove

Flattening layers and introducing AI can reduce bureaucracy — but simply removing managers risks creating a vacuum where alignment and culture begin to fray. Leaders need to rethink and redesign management as a true multiplier of value:

1. Redefine managerial roles: Make managing people and strategy a full-time leadership responsibility — not something squeezed into an individual contributor’s workload. Give them fully staffed teams that have meaningful span to make the role "weighty" enough to deserve a management seat.

   
   

2. Invest in capability — at every level: Too often, new managers are promoted with little more than congratulations and a bigger workload. But leadership is learned — and it evolves at each level. As managers step up, they must let go of old habits, adopt new skills, and grow into their next-level responsibilities. Organizations should support this through structured training, coaching, ongoing feedback — and by encouraging strong, experienced managers to mentor and guide their junior peers. The best way to multiply great practices is through managers modeling and passing them on.

   
   

3. Deploy AI thoughtfully: Use technology to eliminate low-value tasks, surface insights, and help managers lead better. Don’t replace judgment and connection with algorithms — enhance them.

   
   

4. Monitor and adjust: Watch engagement, innovation, and alignment over time. Be willing to recalibrate your management model when the data — or your people — tell you something isn’t working.

   
   

Leadership with Heart and Purpose

Leaner structures and smarter technology are powerful — but a leaderless organization is a fragile one.

Redesign managerial roles with clarity, purpose, and humanity to unlock something no algorithm ever will: the full potential of your people.

Managers are multipliers. They amplify strategy, culture, and talent across the organization. Flattening isn’t an excuse to eliminate managers — it’s a call to elevate them.

And organizations that do so will outperform those who don’t, as competitors who double down on great managers paired with AI see outsized returns.

Unless the workforce becomes entirely automated, the professional manager will remain a strategic differentiator well into the future.