{"id":7067598,"date":"2026-09-26T16:17:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/the-great-delayering-is-solving-the-wrong-management-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T16:17:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:17:21","slug":"the-great-delayering-is-solving-the-wrong-management-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7067598","title":{"rendered":"The Great Delayering Is Solving the Wrong Management Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Chip Cutter wrote an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal: Corporate America Is Axing the \u2018Micro-Team Boss.\u00a0<\/a> Cutter writes: \u201cAt Uber and elsewhere, managers with small fiefdoms have become an especially vulnerable target in the push to purge the management ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps unexpectedly, given my prior writing on delayering<\/a> and restructuring wreckage,<\/a> I don\u2019t mind eliminating the small-team managers.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and eliminate the micro-team boss. Just don\u2019t eliminate the work of management. Instead, reconceive and redeploy the role for the world we\u2019re entering.<\/p>\n

What I object to is the direction organizations are moving in, as shared in Cutter\u2019s article: \u201cMany employers now expect managers to do less coordinating between departments, and to spend more time in the trenches building products or generating revenues themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The shift to player-managers with dramatically larger spans of control (number of direct reports) is a guaranteed plan to suboptimize on the human side of our organizations.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re increasing the coordination demands of organizations while systematically reducing our capacity to coordinate (and coach, teach, and remove impediments).<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, let\u2019s unpack this.<\/p>\n

My thinking in a logic chain is as follows:<\/p>\n

AI \u2192 more possibilities \u2192 more experimentation \u2192 more cross-functional dependencies \u2192 more decisions \u2192 more coordination \u2192 greater need for coaching, alignment, judgment, and obstacle removal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

AI is eliminating some of the work managers used to do while simultaneously increasing the importance of the work great managers actually do.<\/p>\n

So, once again, organizational leaders,<\/p>\n