The humane execution matters, and there is a structural reason these cuts keep landing on the same layer. Gallup has reports per manager rising from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, and Gartner expects 1 in 5 organizations to use AI to remove more than half of middle management roles through 2026. The manager whose job was routing work, status meetings and approvals is the one AI compresses first. The manager who owns an outcome is not. The most human thing a leader can do alongside the conversation itself is be honest about which kind of role someone is being moved out of, because it changes what they reach for next. Are the orgs you see separating those two manager archetypes before they decide who goes?
The humane execution matters, and there is a structural reason these cuts keep landing on the same layer. Gallup has reports per manager rising from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, and Gartner expects 1 in 5 organizations to use AI to remove more than half of middle management roles through 2026. The manager whose job was routing work, status meetings and approvals is the one AI compresses first. The manager who owns an outcome is not. The most human thing a leader can do alongside the conversation itself is be honest about which kind of role someone is being moved out of, because it changes what they reach for next. Are the orgs you see separating those two manager archetypes before they decide who goes?
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