From this Economist article, we can see trends 📉 in technology *management* roles.
- Last year, Google cut 35% of managers overseeing teams of fewer than three. Amazon trimmed management including in its cloud-computing arm. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been complaining about “managers managing managers” since 2023.
- Through last fall, “reducing management layers” was mentioned on earning calls of companies in S&P’s global stock market index, twice as often as in all of 2022.
- According to BLS, between 2019 and 2024 five of the ten fastest-growing roles were in management and now companies are shedding excess.
No need for managers 🤖, but we very much need *leaders*.
- AI can do administrivia. According to a survey by McKinsey cited in the article, managers spend about a quarter of their time on administrative tasks.
- AI will be able to do technical tasks. If your subject matter expertise is coding, AI is continuously improving what it can do for you and your team so your expertise will be less important.
- People lead teams. We need people to lead with empathy, creativity and humor — AI provides great support but not *leadership*.
Build your *change leadership* đź’ˇ skills.
- You’re ready for it. You experimented with AI last year. Now you can use it to handle administration so you can focus on leading your team.
- You can use frameworks to help you. We’ve moved beyond ProSci for change management and need to be change leaders.
- If you love physics, check out our course at Colorado School of Mines Professional Education Program. We help you use this familiar framework for *leading change* in your organization.
We’ve been working on AI use cases for the last 18 months that drive customer engagement, increase operational efficiency and allow us to provide scalable services. In 2026, CIOs need to drive value creation using the 2025 experimentation as a foundation for proving value delivery. I’m an advocate for change leadership from our first management roles up to the C-suite.
Blue Cairn 