A World with No Managers?

The graphic designer came into work knowing that the client account was overdue for a project meeting. But there was no one to call the meeting: His boss had been let go in a round of layoffs a month earlier. And his boss’s boss had been laid off the year before. The designer now reported to a hands-off executive who didn’t know the details of the project.

A new reality is emerging in the modern workplace—one that in some cases features no manager. Last year, in a sign of the aggressiveness with which firms are removing them, middle managers represented 31.5% of all layoffs, and an average of 22% between 2018 and 2022, according to job tracker Live Data Technologies. And when middle managers depart voluntarily, they are not being replaced, which creates a void in leadership. “If you cut and cut and cut, but don’t change mindsets, you can accelerate vertical hierarchy,” says Mark Arian, CEO of Korn Ferry Consulting. “You can end up in a bit of a death spiral.”

The disappearing layer of middle management is especially common in professional services, where the top of the traditional org-chart pyramid is growing rather sharp. In theory, trimming the middle layer can strengthen workflows: Autonomy and decision-making extend downward, and customer responsiveness improves, along with accountability and morale. But “that doesn’t necessarily happen,” says Arian. In practice, sometimes authority coalesces at top levels, leaving underlings awaiting signals.

To be sure, rumors about imperiled middle management have been circulating for a decade. But experts say today’s middle managers are under unprecedented pressure. Half are burned-out. Thirty percent are too stressed to support their teams, according to employees participating in LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey. “They’ve been inundated,” says sustainability and ESG expert Cheryl D’Cruz-Young, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. Many struggle to prioritize and escape the so-called frozen middle. 

The middle manager heave-ho is being driven by a number of practical forces, beginning with financial realities: Top-line growth has stalled while labor costs have jumped, meaning that companies need to make adjustments in order to maintain their margins. Some professional-service firms are “delayering”—an old-school staff-reduction technique of thinning middle management in order to improve flexibility and responsiveness. At the same time, some firms are eager to preserve the nimbleness and adaptability that teams displayed during the pandemic. Lastly, massive technological and workforce skill changes have lessened the need for constant managerial overhead. Experts say that shifting org charts are to be expected, and should be implemented alongside massive technological and workforce changes. “The structure is evolving, as it should,” says D’Cruz-Young.

Experts advise firm leaders to proceed with great caution. “When you get rid of middle managers, the margin for error becomes minuscule,” says JP Sniffen, practice leader at Korn Ferry’s Military Center of Expertise. “They’re often the common-sense police.” Rather than making deep cuts, experts advise piloting studies of new organizational structures. At Korn Ferry, clients are creating multidisciplinary, agile teams that are customer-centric. “It’s the opposite of bureaucracy,” says Arian. The idea is to train teams to be adaptive and integrative.

Experts advise training teams to be inclusive and knowledgeable about the expertise and leadership of each trainee. This means creating norms that allow leadership to shift from person to person depending on the scenario, says Andrés Tapia, global DE&I strategist at Korn Ferry. Ideally, teams will learn to be self-regulating. “We need to get used to a very dynamic flow of power,” he says.

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Workforce Management capabilities.

Read more This Week in Leadership articles