AI is rewriting the logic of management

What’s the point of a manager, really? Ask an executive, and they may say managers are essential for ensuring accountability and team performance. Ask an employee, and they’ll probably tell you that becoming a manager is their main path to advancement. Both perspectives hold truth, and both underscore a pressing need to reconsider how management roles operate. Many organizations have a lot of managers in their ranks, perhaps due to a long-standing belief that investing in manager positions will improve business performance. However, promoting employees to management as a retention strategy has overpopulated leadership ranks while diminishing the quality of leadership itself. Only 22% of managers globally are engaged at work, according to Gallup. As the rise of AI creates an expectation and opportunity for organizations to oversee more people with fewer leaders, the “addiction” to managers is hitting a breaking point. While some organizations will default to the status quo, those that use AI to amplify human judgment can move beyond traditional management models and begin to capture return on investment (ROI). Why we’re addicted to managers (and what it’s costing us) This is not to say that management roles have no purpose. Certainly, they exist for practical reasons. Managers are responsible for frontline supervision, from setting goals that align their teams with business strategy to coordinating across departments. Just as critically, they support the employee experience by offering coaching, hiring new staff, handling HR and compensation questions, and helping to build a positive team culture. Yet being a manager has also become a social contract—an unspoken agreement that employees who stick around will eventually be promoted to a leadership role. Becoming a manager tends to be the fastest track to greater influence and higher pay: On average, managers earn 33% more than individual contributors who do not manage others, and that gap grows to over 50% at senior l