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The "Glue People": Will AI Actually Delete Middle Management?



If you listen to the headlines, middle management is a redundant layer of "process debt" waiting to be automated into oblivion. But if you look at history, the story is a lot more complicated. Are these roles just expensive overhead, or are they the "glue" that keeps a multi-billion dollar machine from vibrating apart?


The "Oil and Vinegar" Problem

Chris and Toby describe organizations as having two distinct poles:

  1. The Boots on the Ground: Highly productive, deeply in the weeds, and often myopic about the broader company strategy.

  2. The Executives: Visionaries talking about the "art of the possible" and long-term targets that might take a year to measure.

Without middle management, these two groups are like oil and vinegar. They don't mix. Middle managers act as the emulsifier—the translators who take executive "stories" and turn them into actionable context for the frontline, while providing "air cover" for their teams to actually get work done.


Why the "Middle" is the Primary Target

From a CEO’s perspective, the incentive to cut middle management is often purely financial:

  • The Fiefdom Protections: High-level executives are rarely the first to go; they build structures around themselves.

  • The Cost-to-Value Ratio: Middle managers are more expensive than frontline staff but don't produce the "widgets" themselves.

  • The AI Promise: There is a massive corporate incentive to prove that the millions spent on AI can yield a return. The easiest place to find that return? Labor reduction.

"Middle managers almost always get cut. But fast forward a decade, and they’ve basically just come back. You can't get rid of them." — Chris

The Context Gap: Can AI Replace "The Why"?

Toby points out a fundamental flaw in the "Replace the Middle with AI" strategy: Context cannot be easily automated. A middle manager doesn't just pass along a memo; they enrich it. They know the history of the team, the personalities involved, and the "logic and rhyme" behind a disorganized organization. If you replace a manager with "AI Bot #42," you might get efficiency, but you lose the mental map of how the company actually breathes.


AI: Cost Cutter or Profitability Driver?

There are two ways to look at this technological shift:

  1. The Defensive View: AI as a tool to eliminate costs (cutting the middle).

  2. The Offensive View: AI as a tool to increase profitability by giving middle managers better data to make faster, higher-impact decisions.


Historically, tech revolutions—from the laptop to Microsoft Office—were supposed to reduce the need for staff. Instead, they just changed what the staff did. We ended up with more information, which required more people to manage and interpret it.


The Verdict: The Middle Will Rise Again

History suggests that even if AI causes a "Great Thinning" of management today, the "glue" will eventually be missed. Whether it’s through capturing "data crumbs" (emails, chats, and documentation) or simply needing a human to navigate Conway’s Law (the idea that organizations mirror their communication structures), the need for connectors is permanent.


As Toby puts it: "We need our storytellers. We need people who can acknowledge when things aren't going right. I don't know that technology does a very good job of that."


What do you think? Is your manager the "glue" keeping your team together, or a layer of process debt waiting to be automated?

 
 
 

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