Organisation Charts – endless boxes and arrows indicating who to whom – could be heading towards the shredder.
The rise of AI agents could remove the management tier and change the way companies operate, according to Microsoft's AI platform product Lead Asha Sharma.
Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI platforms said it was released on Thursday in an episode of “Lenny's Podcast.”
“Org charts start to become work charts,” Sharma said, adding, “Tasks and throughput are more important than before.”
“It doesn't require that many layers,” said Microsoft executive.
In other words, if AI agents are embedded in all workflows, companies may coordinate tasks that automatically route to the appropriate human agent mix, rather than asking the company “who to report to?”
“You're starting to think in the hierarchy and you won't be communicating upwards,” Sharma said. “You start to grasp things like outwardly task-based types of opportunities.”
The big shift she added is also lies in the questions companies face. How can I automatically determine where to route a task? Who should take it? How do you monitor whether the agent is doing it correctly and if not, tweak it?
Sharma also said that workers can one day bring their own “agent stacks” to the office, just like how employees bring their own devices.
“You can get access to a set of skills you haven't seen before,” she said.
It could change the way meetings are run. “They're going to be weird, but I think they'll get a little better,” she added.
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“We believe that when AI agents are embedded within the entire workflow, the structure of work will naturally shift from static hierarchies to dynamic throughput. That doesn't mean work, not work. Historically, all major technological changes have produced more work. AI is no exception.
Great flattening
Big Tech has dropped the management team to reduce bureaucracy.
Microsoft cut roughly to around 6,000 employees in May, and executives told Business Insider that one of the motivations behind the cuts was to increase the number of managers' “Span of Control” or reports per manager.
Other tech giants like Intel, Amazon and Google have made similar moves. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told staff later last year that the company cut the role of Vice President and Manager by 10% as part of an efficient push. Amazon CEO Andy Jass said he hopes the company operates like the “world's biggest startup.”
With AI agents in the mix now, middle managers face even greater threats.
Retool CEO David Hsu tells Business Insider that clients such as Boston Consulting Group, Amazon Web Services and Databricks are openly asking.
Some companies are already experimenting with agents as stand-in for middle managers. Clients use them to analyze meetings and send performance notes back to employees, HSU said.
He added that a company is considering eliminating sales managers in order for “agent managers” to provide more objective feedback.
