Return-to-office fights and cost-cutting dominate headlines, but the most consequential workplace shift sits between them: the layer where coordination and judgment used to live. Manager engagement has fallen sharply, and firms are experimenting with flatter structures while AI automates supervision’s paperwork. Some see extinction. The evidence points to something less dramatic and more demanding: a redesign of how leadership is distributed.
The squeeze on the role
Global engagement has slipped to 20 percent, the lowest since 2020, and Gallup estimates the drag at roughly 9 percent of global GDP, about 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity (Gallup, 2025). Managers are not insulated. Their engagement dropped from 27 to 22 percent between 2024 and 2025, a steep fall in a single year (Gallup, 2025). This is the lived context for “the end of the middle manager”: a cohort asked to do more with less, and less certain why.
Hiring data and forecasts map the structural pressure. Employers in the United States posted 42 percent fewer middle‑management roles at the end of 2024 than in spring 2022, according to Deloitte’s 2025 survey, which also reports that managers spend nearly 40 percent of their time on firefighting and administration and only 13 percent on developing their people. More than a third feel unprepared for the people side of the job (Deloitte, 2025). Gartner’s forecast, cited in the same report, is blunt: by 2026, 20 percent of organizations will use AI to flatten their structures (Deloitte, 2025). Fortune reports the further Gartner expectation that in those companies more than half of middle‑management positions could be eliminated, a prediction rather than a present fact (Fortune, 2025).
Leaders also admit that their organizations are too complicated. In a 2023 survey of more than 2,500 executives, two‑thirds said their organizations were overly complex and inefficient, and only half felt prepared to anticipate and react to shocks (McKinsey, 2023). Since the pandemic, about 90 percent of organizations have adopted some form of hybrid model, which shifts coordination into written processes and tools and strains traditional supervisory habits (McKinsey, 2023). Flattening is not only about cuts. It is a response to complexity and new modes of work that punish slow handoffs and committee delays.
What a flatter system really looks like
The cleanest large‑scale case is outside tech and finance. Buurtzorg, a Dutch home‑care organization, grew to about 14,700 employees by January 2021 organized in more than 900 self‑managing teams of up to 12 nurses each. It has two directors, roughly 50 people in the back office, and no middle managers or supervisors. About 21 internal coaches support roughly 950 teams, and those coaches have no formal authority or responsibility for team productivity (Martela and Nandram, 2025). The researchers note boundary conditions. The model works better when interdependence between teams is low and frontline professionals are highly motivated and competent (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
Costs and overhead complicate the romance of “no bosses.” A KPMG estimate from around 2015 put Buurtzorg’s overhead near 8 percent versus a sector average near 25 percent, but the organization’s hourly cost was higher than peers, €54.47 versus €48.74 (Martela and Nandram, 2025). This is not a cheap trick. It is a design choice that trades hierarchy for autonomy, supported by lightweight coaching and clarity on who decides what.
The broader debate has been noisy for a decade. When Zappos adopted holacracy, it drew a wave of celebration and criticism. A balanced reading was already on offer in 2016: treat self‑management as a set of design choices, not a creed, and judge it by the work it serves rather than ideology. The authors stressed separating rhetoric from operating reality when assessing “boss‑less” models (Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee, 2016). That counsel holds in 2026.
What to cut, and what to keep
The surveys explain why the middle is under review. If managers spend most of their week on administrative churn and urgent escalations, and only a sliver coaching people, that is a misallocation ripe for software and shared services (Deloitte, 2025). If many leaders think their organizations are too complex, then fewer layers are a rational response, provided decision rights and information flows are rebuilt around teams that do the work (McKinsey, 2023).
The Buurtzorg design points to a viable pattern in settings with modular work and skilled professionals: shrink formal lines of control, invest in a small cadre of coaches without authority, and push decisions to the edge (Martela and Nandram, 2025). Where interdependence is higher and tasks are variable, the middle manager’s job changes rather than disappears. The role becomes part product manager of the workflow, part talent developer, and part translator between strategy and local execution. That is interpretation, not a universal law, but it aligns with the observed gap between what managers do and what their teams need more of.
Two practical reads follow from the evidence:
- Start with a workload audit. Compare real manager time use to the Deloitte pattern. If coaching and capability building lag far behind administration, centralize or automate the latter and make the former explicit in job design and incentives (Deloitte, 2025).
- Flatten where the work allows it, not where it sounds bold. Use the Buurtzorg boundaries: low interdependence between teams and high professional competence support fewer layers and coach roles in place of bosses. In complex, cross‑dependent domains, simplify spans and clarify decision rights before cutting rungs (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
A final caution. Forecasts are not faits accomplis. That 20 percent of organizations might use AI to flatten by 2026 and that more than half of middle‑management roles could go in those firms are predictions, not measurements (Deloitte, 2025; Fortune, 2025). What is measured today is a widening gap between common practice and better practice. In the best organizations Gallup tracks, 79 percent of managers are engaged, almost four times the global average. That is a design outcome, not an accident of the cycle (Gallup, 2025).
The practical implication
The middle is shrinking, but leadership still has to happen. Treat this not as a pink‑slip exercise, but as an operating model choice. Use AI and process redesign to strip out bureaucracy. Move managers’ calendars toward coaching and system stewardship. Flatten where the work is modular and the people are ready. And remember the quiet lesson from both the surveys and the Buurtzorg case: simplicity pays only when you do the hard work of making responsibility unmistakable.
Sources
- Gallup (2025). State of the Global Workplace 2025. Reports global employee engagement at 20 percent, manager engagement falling from 27 to 22 percent year over year, and an estimated 9 percent of global GDP lost to disengagement. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659610/state-global-workplace.aspx
- Deloitte (2025). 2025 Global Human Capital Trends. Finds U.S. postings for middle management down 42 percent vs. 2022, managers spending nearly 40 percent of time on admin/firefighting and 13 percent on development, and cites Gartner’s forecast that 20 percent of organizations will use AI to flatten by 2026. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends/2025.html
- Fortune (2025). Surviving the great flattening: the coming extinction of the middle manager. Cites a Gartner prediction that among firms using AI to flatten by 2026, more than half of middle‑management roles could be eliminated; presented as a forecast. https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/surviving-great-flattening-coming-extinction-of-middle-manager-layoffs/
- Martela and Nandram (2025). Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers. Documents Buurtzorg’s scale with no middle managers, its coach model without formal authority, boundary conditions, a circa‑2015 overhead estimate of 8 percent vs. 25 percent, and higher hourly costs. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-y
- McKinsey (2023). The State of Organizations 2023. Reports that two‑thirds of leaders see their organizations as overly complex and inefficient, only half feel prepared for shocks, and about 90 percent adopted some form of hybrid work after COVID‑19. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-state-of-organizations-2023
- Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee (2016). Beyond the Holacracy Hype. Argues for a balanced, non‑ideological evaluation of self‑management experiments such as Zappos, framing how to assess “boss‑less” designs. https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype