Warning To All Managers: Your Job Is Becoming Obsolete

Forbes

a day ago

In 1882, Arthur Conan Doyle published a story about the mysterious disappearance of a famous racehorse and the murder of the horse's trainer. No one could figure it out until the fictional detective Sherlock Homes pointed out that none of the witnesses had heard the watchdog bark during the night. This negative fact showed that criminal must have been someone the dog recognized. Mystery solved!
Negative facts can also be important in business. Take last week's vision statement by CEO Satya Nadella's to Microsoft's staff in which he presented comprehensive vision of the why, the now, and the what of this giant corporation's future. Ask yourself what was a key negative fact about the statement? If you can't recall it, go back and re-read it. What was the most important negative fact in the statement?
Missing From Microsoft's Future Vision: Managers
The answer? The terms 'manager', 'managing' and 'management' were not used.
Nadella's brilliant vision of Microsoft's future included 'people,' 'colleagues,' 'teammates,' 'friends,' 'researchers,' analysts,' 'teams,' 'individuals,' 'individuals,' 'customers,' but no 'managers.'
How could this be, when Microsoft is widely seen as a paragon of the modern way to run a business? The answer could be that Microsoft is an example of the new kind of organization that doesn't want or need managers or management. It is busy empowering and enabling its staff and its customers.
Amazon Wants Builders and Owners, Fewer Managers
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy offers a similar explanation in his recent conversation in Harvard Business Review with Adi Ignatius. He is trying to root out bureaucracy. He explains: 'As you get bigger, you have a lot of managers—well-intended people—who keep layering in processes. And pretty soon you have process upon process upon process, which slows people down, so they can't get the real work done.'
He recalls: 'We started our cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services, with about 13 employees. With a small number of people, you can build something that resonates with customers and then keep iterating from there…We want to flatten the organization in order to move faster and to drive more ownership… It's part of our effort to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers.'
Jassy talks about operating Amazon as :the world's largest startup… Whatever we build or wherever we commit resources, we make sure that we're solving a real customer problem…Startups are missionary about trying to solve problems for customers.'
For Jassy, 'speed is a leadership decision. You can decide you want to move fast, but you have to figure out what's slowing you down and knock all those barriers out. Then you've got to get the whole organization aligned on moving really fast, even if you make mistakes along the way.'
Jassy is looking for more 'builders,' 'owners,' 'risk takers,' and 'missionaries,' who can move quickly and autonomously. He is trying to remove 'anything that slows people down, so they can't get the real work done.' That includes managers.
And read also:
Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—By Solving The Wrong Problem
Why Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—It's Not Rocket Science—Or AI