How will AI change the org chart?

{"text":[[{"start":3.24,"text":"Reports of the death of middle management usually turn out to be highly exaggerated. But there is reason to attach a little more credence to the latest, from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey: it came just weeks after he axed thousands of jobs at his latest venture, fintech Block."}],[{"start":21.729999999999997,"text":"Dorsey believes the hierarchical org charts that have served since the Romans — eight employees reporting up to the next level and so on to the top — are going the way of the toga. That’s because a lot of middle management, in essence, is about taking a broad strategy and dividing it up into ever smaller parcels of responsibility, and then flowing information up the chain. AI, with access to real-time internal and customer data, can leapfrog the process and run the show. The roles remaining for humans, in this vision, are those related to actually making products, problem-solving, and coaching their peers."}],[{"start":63.16,"text":"Dorsey’s vision is a striking departure from the way in which companies are currently using AI. Overall subscriptions are rising. But evidence so far suggests that the technology is taking on smaller discrete parcels of work, slowing the hire of, say, junior software developers but not yet taking too big a bite out of the roles of seniors. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":87.09,"text":"But stripping out layers of management is indubitably attractive; unless, of course, it happens to be your job. Some quick maths. Putting America’s 21mn managers on the group’s median salary gives an aggregate $2.6tn pay cheque. Block, which admittedly has been through various iterations, squeezes far more revenue out of each employee than it did 10 years ago."}],[{"start":114.57000000000001,"text":"How likely is a great hollowing out of middle management? Self-interest informs the views of both camps. Good managers see their role as much more than mere facilitators or information conduits: they motivate, coach and stretch their underlings. So far, AI can’t do all that. And governments are unconvinced too. The US Bureau of Labor projects 1.1mn openings a year, only partly due to workers leaving the field. "}],[{"start":147.01,"text":"Yet at the micro level there is evidence that it pays to collapse the layers of command. Sweden’s Handelsbanken dispenses with centralised management and gleans higher returns on capital employed than its more conventionally managed European peers. Japan’s Disco Corp, which makes machines for manufacturing semiconductors and has gamified the entire working day. Replacing bosses’ orders with the dispensation of company tokens for carrying out specified jobs turns out to be good for profitability; Disco’s operating margins trump those of its peers."}],[{"start":182.89999999999998,"text":"Closer perhaps to Dorsey’s vision are the companies replacing angular org charts with self-managed entrepreneurial cells, a scheme Germany’s Bayer dubs dynamic shared ownership. The agri-science and pharma group has halved management positions and culled 12,000 jobs. The potential iterations are plentiful, and today’s managers at least have a role to play in designing AI deployment — leaving less waterfront for their human successors."}],[{"start":222.21999999999997,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1775978710_8170.mp3"}