ReportWire

Tag: managers

  • AI is taking over managers’ busywork—and it’s forcing companies to reset expectations | Fortune

    [ad_1]

    AI isn’t just a new tool for the modern workplace; it’s already quietly reshaping how some companies are organized. Companies including Amazon, Moderna, and McKinsey are already eliminating management layers, working to flatten organizations, and deploying AI agents to automate routine work. 

    As AI rewrites the corporate org chart, humans can avoid some managerial drudgery, according to industry leaders at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference. Managers currently spend a lot of time bogged down with digital tools and administrative tasks, Danielle Perszyk, a Cognitive Scientist at Amazon’s AGI SF Lab, said: “Whether you are a manager or an IC, you are tethered to your computer screen, and all of the productivity apps that we are using are actually undermining our productivity.”

    AI agents functioning as “universal teammates” and doing some of these tasks could help managers escape this cycle, Perszyk said, allowing them to focus on strategy. Aashna Kircher, Group General Manager in the Office of the CHRO at Workday, said this could free up managers’ time for other kinds of work. “The role of the manager will very much be as a coach and enabler and a team work director, which theoretically has always been the role,” she said.

    Toby Roberts, SVP of Engineering and Technology at Zillow, said that the shift toward AI agents could fundamentally change management structure. Escaping day-to-day minutiae could allow managers to oversee larger teams, he said.

    However, as AI automates more of managers’ work, companies may need to reset expectations around what management means in the AI age.

    “Historically, we’ve measured management by the output of their teams, not necessarily by the human qualities of being a manager,” Kircher said. Organizations need to build “accountability and incentive structures around rewarding the things that are going to be absolutely critical moving forward for people leaders.”

    What AI can’t do

    AI can also have negative downstream effects on interpersonal relationships if it is overused or misused. When managers over-rely on AI for collaborative work, organizations risk deteriorating people’s ability to work together effectively, said to Kate Niederhoffer, Chief Scientist and Head of BetterUp Labs.

    “Direct reports’ perceptions of managers go down the more they perceive AI and agents to be used in moments of recognition or providing constructive feedback,” Niederhoffer said. “People perceive that humans are better at these empathetic and more essentially human tasks.”

    Some managers already struggle with the emotional side of leadership, with many becoming “accidental managers”—employees who were promoted for their professional talents rather than people skills. 

    But AI’s “synthetic empathy”—even if it’s sometimes more consistent than human interactions—is not the answer, said Stefano Corazza, Head of AI Research at Canva. “The more AI there is, the more authenticity is valued,” he said. “If your manager really shows that he will spend time with you and cares, that goes a long way.”

    [ad_2]

    Beatrice Nolan

    Source link

  • Fix Your Management System, and You Might Realize You Have More Good Managers Than You Think

    [ad_1]

    There are seven brutal truths that separate good managers from bad—trust, clear boundaries, courage under pressure, and so on, according to a recent Fast Company article. Helpful, yes. But here’s the bigger truth leaders often miss: Great management systems turn mediocre managers into good ones—and good ones into great ones. 

    This matters because the manager is the single biggest lever on engagement. Gallup has long shown that managers account for the majority of variance in team engagement. 

    Look at Toyota. Decades of analysis point to a disciplined management system—clear standards, fast feedback loops, and structured problem solving—that produces reliable performance across plants and leaders. The excellence isn’t a personality. It’s a process, as touted by this Harvard Business School perspective on TPS resilience. It’s not unlike the Southwest Airlines I knew. 

    Beyond the manager 

    If one team is bleeding talent, then you probably have a manager problem. That is something you can deal with in a pointed way—the exit interviews should give you some direction. However, if many teams show similar turnover patterns, you likely don’t have many bad managers. You have one weak system. If your management system is bad, you can hire all the good managers you can find, but your results won’t change. 

    That’s the distinction I see repeatedly in our economic engagement work. Systems that align everyone around customers, transparency, and shared success raise the ceiling and the floor of managerial performance.  

    A real-world turnaround 

    Consider a company I helped lead out of bankruptcy—a South Carolina manufacturer that recycled nylon from used carpet into pellets for automotive parts. The fundamentals looked promising (rising oil prices and sustainability tailwinds), but the business was failing when it was acquired out of bankruptcy in 2008. 

    This was the “before” picture: Commercially, the sales group had no shared focus. In one egregious case, a salaried rep spent much of his time selling for a competitor. We changed personnel, but the deeper issue was no system—no unified strategy, no clear customer or employee voice, no operating rhythm. It was a company of hired hands. 

    First, we divided responsibilities—operations drove throughput and cost discipline; sales and marketing drove customer value and product approvals. We installed an annual strategy cycle, monthly operating reviews, and transparency scoreboards. This way, managers could see and understand cause‑and‑effect and act fast. 

    Bottlenecks surfaced quickly. Upstream, our collection partner couldn’t scale reclaimed carpet volume. Instead of squeezing them, we partnered with them. We let them focus on collection, while we built and staffed regional distribution centers and ran logistics to the plant. Each party played to their strengths. It all came down to system design. 

    Downstream, approvals from big automakers, especially Ford, were slow. So, we extended the same partnering approach. We invited Ford’s engineering, quality, and purchasing leaders to tour our 600‑acre site and then join our weekly strategic planning meeting that afternoon. They saw our capabilities firsthand, told us exactly what mattered, and helped shape priorities for our highest-value product line. Their leader closed by saying he’d never been invited into a suppliers’ strategy session and that Ford needed more partners like this. 

    Now for the “after” picture: With clarity on what customers valued most, transparent key metrics, and aligned incentives, line managers began making better decisions. Operations could respond to demand in real-time, and commercial teams targeted the right accounts. After five years, the company sold for more than five times the purchase price. We also shared value with employees because they were true partners in the system. 

    Systems that work 

    A strong management system, like economic engagement, can engage every leader in the same mission: serving customers profitably. Here’s how: 

    1. Customers define a company’s value, so managers don’t manage by personal opinion. To drive customer engagement, consider what your customers are thinking right now.
    2. Economic understanding—how we make money, what drives profit—aligns all employees in a common understanding of what defines winning for the company, making management easier and more effective. It is critical to empower employees to think like owners. 
    3. Transparency reinforces good behavior and exposes bad behavior early.  
    4. When compensation ties to performance outcomes, managers and employees are economically aligned, and everyone has a stake in the company’s success. Empirical work on profit‑sharing shows measurable boosts.  
    5. Employee participation leads to lower turnover, better relationships, and shared learning. 

    The manager uplift 

    In 30 years of doing this work, I’ve watched three predictable paths unfold when you solve the management system problem: 

    • Good managers get even better, because the system amplifies their strengths. 
    • OK managers level up, because the system teaches what true engagement looks like and rewards it.
    • Poor managers either improve or opt out because the system won’t tolerate persistently bad behavior. 

    Before you blame your managers for dwindling engagement or results, examine the management system you’ve placed them in. Fix the system, and you’ll likely discover you already have more good managers than you think. Managers will come and go. Great management systems endure—and compound greatness. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    [ad_2]

    Bill Fotsch

    Source link

  • How Economic Uncertainty is Sapping Executives’ Confidence

    [ad_1]

    Critics of President Donald Trump’s trade war, mass deportations, and other contested policies have repeatedly warned the measures risked provoking renewed inflation, economic contraction, and mass job losses. While most of those dire predictions have —thankfully — not yet come to pass, U.S. executives are increasingly anxious about their companies and professional futures amid continued uncertainty all the same.

    Three different studies reflect growing concern among top managers about their personal and professional stakes in today’s uncertain business and economic environment. The broadest of those studies in scope was consultancy Deloitte’s latest quarterly poll of chief financial officers (CFO). While it found that the general confidence level of respondents rose slightly in September compared to earlier this year, it noted its 5.7-point reading “remains in medium territory… (and) is well below the 6.4 mark registered at the beginning of the year.” Other results included only 65 percent of participants saying the current economic situation is not safe to take risks in, and just 15 percent described the economy itself as “good.” 

    Among the top threats to business cited by participating executives were inflation, high interest rates, faltering economic growth, and supply chain disruptions from tariffs. But even if those didn’t prevent the confidence index of CFOs creeping up a little in Deloitte’s survey, even that mediocre outlook appeared strong compared to those captured by consultancy Korn Ferry in its recent poll of CEOs and board members.

    Its polling found 63 percent of top company officials said risks to their businesses had increased more rapidly over the past year. Meanwhile, just 11 percent of respondents said they felt fully confident about their organization’s ability to successfully navigate those multiplying challenges. The leading worries voiced by participants were minimal early returns on artificial intelligence investments, a shortage of qualified candidates to fill job openings, and internal resistance by existing staff to policy or cultural change.

    Another concern, focused on an aspect of the increased economic volatility observed since Trump came to office, was executives’ recognition that those risks are spread unevenly across various business sectors. Around 86 percent of leaders of consumer businesses said that growing unpredictability was a major concern, topping all other categories. Second most exposed to the rising uncertainty were industrial companies, with 83 percent calling it a big problem.

    “Many leaders are challenged to navigate so many forces simultaneously,” said Tierney Remick, head of Korn Ferry Services. “We’re seeing uneasiness — especially among long-tenured CEOs who have weathered decades of change but now face a convergence of risks unlike anything before.”

    A third survey, by workforce management platform Kahoot!, found uncertainty rising on a more personal level among the 221 human relations and training professionals polled. It found most responding managers feeling the same disengagement also reported by growing numbers of employees across U.S. workplaces over the past year.

    Nearly 80 percent of participating C-suite executives said that while their teams appear to view them as “fully engaged” in their work, only 47 percent said they actually were all-in and energized on the job. Over a third of respondents reported feeling burned out daily or several times during the week, with 22 percent saying they’ve often or always felt disconnected from teams they work with over the past six months.

    That psychological and emotional disconnect has consequences on two important levels.

    First, it led 46 percent of participating managers to say they’d be willing to give up their executive titles if that would allow them to feel engaged again. Another 26 percent confided that they’d considered quitting in the past year in order to stop feeling so adrift on the job.

    Meanwhile, with recent Gallup data showing only 31 percent of all employees saying they felt engaged at work, the risk of already slackening workplace energy and enthusiasm waning even more increases further as more managers overseeing staff similarly withdraw.

    But Kahoot! CEO Eilert Hanoa noted that as troubling as that development among top managers is, there are ways for companies to remedy the problem.

    “If leaders are ready to trade away their title for the chance to feel engaged, it signals something profound,” said Hanoa in comments about the findings. “Leaders are telling us loud and clear that recognition, training and connection matter more than status. Engagement cannot be a side project. If engagement fails at the top, it fails everywhere. The companies that respond will not only retain their leaders but unlock the energy of entire teams.”

    How do businesses effectively react? By showing executives the same attention, consideration, and support that lower-level employees say they need.

    When asked what would boost their engagement most, 69 percent of executives answering the survey cited more recognition and incentives from their companies, followed by 57 percent who said greater connection between teams would help. Nearly 45 percent said simply introducing more competition or gamification exercises at work would be beneficial — with 58 percent predicting that initiative alone would would result in increased energy, creativity, and fun on the job.

    Over half of respondents also getting more training to build their skills would strengthen their engagement. That’s a desire that a nearly 80 percent of lower-level employees have increasingly expressed, especially Gen Zers who place a premium on professional and personal growth.

    Meaning, there are many relatively easy ways employers can start addressing and reversing declining workforce engagement — awaiting the return of improved macroeconomic conditions capable of curing the broader doubts many companies now face at all levels of staff hierarchy amid today’s uncertainty.

    [ad_2]

    Bruce Crumley

    Source link