管理者角色革新与人效提升新路径报告

For most organizations, the value isn't found ineliminating the role-or ignoring the need for change.There'sathirdpath:reinvention.AndAI canhelp ARTICLE + 17-MIN READ • 24 MARCH 2025 Companies with strong management report up to 15% higher financial performancethan those with weaker management,' and evidence suggests managers may havemore influence on an organization's performance than any other group.’ So why aresome organizations either eliminating the role completely or greatly reducing thenumber of middle manager roles? This shift toward “bossless" organizations is likely being driven by a renewed focuson efficiency, agility, and worker empowerment with “zero distance" to thecustomer. Economic pressures have organizations looking to reduce costs, andartificial intelligence and other technologies are poised to take on manyadministrative tasks. According to one analysis, US employers were advertising 42%fewer middle management positions at the end of 2024 than they did in the spring of2022.°And research by Gartner predicts that through 2026, 20% of organizationswill use AI to flatten their organizational structure, eliminating more than half ofcurrent middle management positions. READ MOREFROMTHEREPORT 2025 Global Human Capital Trends These changes beg the question: Is there still value in the manager role? Some key capabilities that managers often perform will always be neededlikecoaching and development of their people. Today, the people being managed are inneed of support more than ever due to the shrinking half-life of skills, the impact ofAl, and the increasing pace of change. And new capabilities will likely need to be developed in light of a changing landscapein the world of work. This suggests that managers may need to take on new roles aswell. Managers, for example, are uniquely situated to redesign work to capitalize onthe promise of Al, enable change and agility in the face of increasing volatility, andmake judgment calls and decisions closer to the customer. It might not be themanager who performs these capabilities, but for most organizations, keeping thesecapabilities in the manager role makes the most sense. For most organizations, eliminating managers altogether isn't the solution. Butneither is simply retaining or elevating the role of the manager as it has existed forover a century. Instead, organizations should seek a third path: reinvention of therole entirely. Because in an age in which work is increasingly complex and volatic,people-powered, and more Al-augmented, the traditional role of the manager may nolonger be fit for purpose. We may indeed have fewer managers in the future, butwhat and how they do their work should evolve for the new world of work. Al, along with new support structures, is a key enabler to this reinvention. Not onlycan AI automate much of the administrative work that takes the time of managerstoday, but it can also become a powerful ally in assisting them with focusing on andleading what matters most to organizational results: •Developing, coaching, motivating, and nurturing people• Redesigning work, reallocating resources, and optimizing human and machineinteractions to drive human performance in the age of AI The promise and perils of unbossing As the role of the manager has come under increased scrutiny, the 'unbossing" trend thatinvolves thinning out middle management has emerged.~ Many organizations are nowexperimenting with eliminating middle manager positions,either as a bold new operatingmodel based on self-organizing teams, or as an exercise focused on cost cutting and reducingbureaucracy.° Others are significantly reducing layers of management and increasing the ratioof workers to supervisors. In an ideal world, this model gives employees more autonomy andcontrol over their work while offering a positive narrative for shareholders that flatteningmanagement will lead to greater efficiencies and agility. For some organizations this model works. But many organizations struggle with realizing thepromise ofit. You can cut the roles, but humans will still lead and be led, even without the formal titles. Thiscreate efficiencies. Organizations that have attempted new forms of unbossing—forexample,holacracies and self-organizing teams—often found that a decentralized, bossless systemended up creating its own form of bureaucracy or other complications. One foundationalstudy revealed that flattened firms with fewer middle managers typically exhibit more controland decision-making at the topthe opposite of what was intended to reduce costs and pushdecisions downward to improve agility. What is a manager, anyway? In many organizations, leaders struggle to clearly define what a manager even isManagers—those who oversee direct reports and act as a bridge between executivestrategy and front-line executionare all too often a catch-all role in theorganization. They are constantly pressured to be project supervisors, change agents,coaches, administrator