No more for the meat grinder

Gen Z decline to get mugged over

Deeper And Down

It’s been apparent to me for some time that the current trajectory of the workplace is unsustainable. Over my corporate career, the work experience degraded and it has not only continued over the couple of decades since I left but accelerated in recent years. I don’t state this as a hypothesis or present it as an argument, it is simply what the evidence is telling us.

In rare momentary breaks in my excoriation of management, I have occasionally sympathised with middle managers and the situation they find themselves in. The role has always been challenging, assailed, as you are, on both sides. You are trying to serve your bosses and meet their demands whilst also supporting your staff and dealing with their needs - all whilst trying to get your own work done. You’re also conduit for information to travel up and down, and a translator of that information. You have to take the vague and confusing strategy from senior management and turn it Into actionable direction for your teams, whilst also taking the raw, unstructured input from your teams and expressing it upwards in a way that will land and not be dismissed out of hand.

It was a tough gig when I did it, since when spans of control have been expanded, the number of initiatives and programmes has increased, the amount of information that hits you has exploded and targets have risen inexorably. A difficult job has been made virtually impossible. If you are trying to be a caring and empathetic leader and a diligent executive, it is impossible.

We know this because ‘Burnout’ is now a thing. Not just a thing but recognised by the World Health Organisation as an ‘occupational phenomenon, and an increasingly prevalent one. It is not a mental health condition but it leads to them on a more than occasional basis. I speak to many people who have been down that particular path.

I’ve been saying for some time that organisations are going to run out people to populate their management structures. Now that is starting to show up. Only 6% of Gen Z say that their primary career goal is to become a leader, according to Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial survey.

It’s not that they lack ambition, over two thirds of Gen Z and Millennials say that they want to reach senior management one day. It’s that they have looked at what leadership (i.e. progressing up the management tree) entails, they have seen the cost on those above them, on their parents and parent’s friends, and they have decided it’s not a good deal. They’ve looked at what’s on offer and have said, “No thanks, I’m OK.”

Undoubtedly, Gen Z and Millennials put more emphasis on work-life balance, on their mental health and wellbeing. Their priorities are different from previous generations but maybe that’s because they’ve seen the cost of neglecting those things to chase status and money.

And not only has the job got harder, the rewards have been reduced over time too. Pay levels have been suppressed, the job has become more precarious, you can’t achieve the same life-style as your predecessors and you have to work way harder.

And now the message is that you’re soon going to get replace by AI.

Sometimes, for change to happen, the existing structures have to collapse. And maybe that collapse is much nearer than many realise.

Walls Come Tumbling Down

For several years, senior management have defined the problem of their organisations as bloat in the middle manager layers (because it couldn’t possibly be their fault, could it?). So we have seen wave after wave of rationalisations and restructures, of ‘transformation’ programmes, of computerisation and digitalisation and automation, all aimed at reducing middle management.

Because by reducing middle management, you will make the organisation more efficient, more responsive, more innovative and more adaptable. Well, that’s the argument. Clearly, it works, right? Because organisations are all more efficient, responsive, innovative and adaptable, right?

Oh.

Well, at least it reduces headcount and payroll costs.

Except that the middle management ‘bloat’ reappears after a while, like a recurring damp patch that persists no matter how often you paint over it. And in the same way that the damp patch is not the problem but a symptom of it, maybe the middle management ‘bloat’ is not the problem but a symptom of a much deeper issue?

With the damp patch, if you don’t find the source of the leak and fix it, the ceiling will eventually fall down.

So maybe senior management are going to be woken up at 2 in the morning by a loud ‘FLUMP!’ (That’s what it sounds like. Trust me, I know from personal experience!) And they’ll find the ceiling of their business has fallen in.

Rescue Me

“Never mind!”, cries the geniuses at the top, “AI will save the day. We won’t need all these managers.”

There are two problems with this. The first is that AI doesn’t, in fact, replace employees, and certainly not the middle managers, who actually hold the organisation together. Companies that have publicly stated they are using AI to replace people are quietly rehiring because AI is nowhere near as capable as they thought and it can never do the silent, unheralded work that managers do to paper over the cracks, work around the problems, and generally keep the show on the road.

The second problem is that telling your managers you are going to replace them with AI is somewhat demotivating. What’s more, telling them they have to take on even more work to learn how to use AI, so that they can train it to replace them, is not the humdinger management thinks it is (unless it is presented in a Brando-esque ‘I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse’ way. Which is frankly sinister but not implausible in the current environment).

It seems there is some pushback as a result. Not just in the lack of enthusiasm for taking on management roles amongst the younger cohorts, but also in a general antipathy to AI across the board. From booing mentions of AI at commencement speeches, through the quiet sabotage of AI implementation, to the outright refusal to use AI and the new Luddite movement.

So the geniuses who run organisations and the geniuses who are leading the AI companies have realised that selling AI as a job killer is not going down too well with the people who’s jobs you have put in the crosshairs (who knew?) and have shifted their message.

Now AI is going to assist humans, not replace them. It’s not going to be your enemy, it’s going to be your friend. You don’t need to fear AI, it’s actually rather cuddly.

So that will fix it, won’t it?

World In Motion

It is clear (well, not to everyone, particularly those at senior levels) that we need a radical change to the way that we organise the workplace and the work. In particular, we have to make the taking on of leadership responsibilities rewarding, both personally and financially. Otherwise, the current structures will simply fall apart.

The paradox here is that AI could enable a transformation in the way that we work and that transformation is also necessary to get the maximum benefits of bringing AI into the workplace.

My mate Antony Malmo pointed out some time ago that the challenge of coordination and communication across large and diverse organisations has exactly the characteristics of large amounts of data and fuzzy logic that AI should be well suited to. This would also remove a huge burden from middle management and free their time up to focus on supporting their people and developing their talent.

Of course, this would also involve a change in senior management attitudes about what is valuable, which are mostly the things that are not recognised or rewarded today. Nothing less than a sea-change in their outlook, in fact.

It’s possible they will get there through an honest appraisal of the situation today and deep reflection.

Who am I trying to kid? It’s going to need a crisis. Or, to be accurate, another crisis. Maybe more. We’re deep in the land of stupid, after all.

They are going to stick with ‘meat grinder management’ until they run out of meat and their management structures collapse and their organisations fall apart. Then they’ll have a change of heart. Or be replaced by people who already get it and are ready to make the changes.