The Future Belongs to the Managers

At infinity, every organization tends to be exclusively staffed by managers. Which is a paradoxical theoretical final state: the moment everyone is a manager, no one is a manager. Sort of an organizational absolute zero, where no work is done because there is no one left to lay any brick.

In some ways, the managerial inflation is understandable: as growth ramps up, more people come in, more processes appear, more bureaucracy, more to be managed: people, papers, machines, systems, projects, products. The crowning spree goes nuts because there’s an increasing urge to encapsulate and package complexity behind single faces.

Crowning managers is like printing money: can be easily done, but the implications can be uglier than the problem it may come to solve. As managers are minted much faster than leadership can be grown or taught, the result is people with lengthy titles but low legitimacy, who are in fact incapable of taking any relevant decision, being left to float in a sea of peripherality and administrative chores. 

Lurking behind the growth of orgs is the need for more consensus, and buy-in seldom comes from pulling rank. When doubt reigns, those with the scars and the knowledge, but also with the openness and the charisma to support and guide others through the uncertainty will always be the ones sought after, regardless what the org chart has to say.