Commentary: AI agents need middle managers too

AI can skirt this problem by going straight to the source: meeting transcripts, support tickets and shared documents. This is the “dormant data” that companies have always produced but could not easily use. It is now accessible directly at the top, enabling radical visibility. 

Executives can query underlying data, review source material and compare a summary with the work itself. At my company I have something my colleagues call “Kai-Fu’s Boss AI”, a system that connects to all corporate records and communications. I once watched Boss AI identify two teams that spent three months building the same feature, even repeating each other’s mistakes, without anyone noticing.

When the cost of moving and reconciling information collapses, the roles built to perform these functions will fade into irrelevance. For a middle manager, that may sound like an obituary. Read it differently and it is a job posting.

FLATTER ORGANISATIONS?

We are going to start to see more companies flattening their organisations with a shorter chain of command. At the top is the executive team. Below it are directly responsible individuals, or DRIs (a term Apple uses internally). Each one owns an outcome from beginning to end, such as a product, a market or a major risk. In large organisations, some middle managers will become DRIs, especially those who adapt quickly to a new fleet of AI tools.