Future of Middle Management: From Managing Tasks to Managing Judgement
In the last weeks, I spoke with many people around me who are managing people, and also managers who manage other managers. Quite often we came to the same question:
What will AI actually do with managerial structures and managerial roles?
We speak a lot about how AI will change jobs. I think we speak much less about how much it will change management itself. For me, there are five important shifts.
Please note: The views expressed on this website are my own and reflect my personal professional experience, research and publicly available information. They do not represent the views, strategies or confidential information of my employer or its affiliated companies.
1. Less coordination, more judgement
A lot of managerial work today is coordination: collecting updates, preparing reports, following actions, checking progress and escalating delays.
AI agents can already do more and more of this.
The manager will therefore spend less time asking for information and more time deciding:
- What is really important?
- What needs action?
- What can be ignored?
- Where is human judgement needed?
2. Managers will manage people and agents
Managers will not manage only teams of people anymore. They will also manage AI agents.
They will need to understand whether an agent is doing a good job, whether it has the right context, where it makes mistakes and when somebody has to intervene.
In some way, AI becomes another type of team member.
3. Less BAU, more unstructured topics
AI will be strongest in structured and repetitive work.
This means managers will probably spend less time on Business as Usual (BAU) and much more time on exceptions, conflicts, transformation, new situations and problems where there is no clear process.
I see an interesting paradox here:
The more structured work AI takes over, the more unstructured the manager's work may become.
4. Managers will handle human vs. AI issues
We will also have a completely new category of management topics.
People will disagree with AI recommendations.
They will complain that AI does not understand reality.
They may question automated decisions or feel they are unfair.
Someone will need to manage this relationship.
Managers will increasingly become the bridge between people and the digital workforce.
5. Managers will also need to “train” AI
Today we expect managers to develop their people.
Tomorrow we will also expect them to improve how their AI performs.
Where did the agent fail?
What context was missing?
Which feedback should be included?
How do we make it better next time?
This will become part of normal management.
So does middle management disappear?
I don't think so. Some layers will probably become smaller. Some roles will disappear.
But I believe the managerial role itself becomes more demanding.
The value will move away from passing information between organizational layers.
It will move towards judgment, solving ambiguity, managing people and agents, and making both work together.
Maybe the biggest impact of AI will therefore not be only how many people we need.
It may be what we actually expect a manager to do.