Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape corporate hierarchies by automating the movement and reconciliation of internal information, according to 01.AI CEO and former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee. By analyzing dormant data—such as meeting transcripts, support tickets, and shared documents—AI systems grant executives direct visibility into operations without relying on traditional information-filtering layers. As a result, companies are expected to flatten their structures into shorter chains of command,…
Key points
Roles focused entirely on filtering and moving information will diminish as corporate cha…: Roles focused entirely on filtering and moving information will diminish as corporate chains of command flatten.
Human managers remain vital to shoulder the consequences of automated actions and guide s…: Human managers remain vital to shoulder the consequences of automated actions and guide software agents.
The value of supervisory roles will pivot from overseeing execution toward mentoring, rel…: The value of supervisory roles will pivot from overseeing execution toward mentoring, relationship building, and strategic judgment.
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When the cost of moving and reconciling corporate information collapses, the roles built to perform these functions must change, says Kai-Fu Lee for the Financial Times.
BEIJING: Back in 1958, two forward-thinking management scholars predicted in Harvard Business Review that computers would eliminate middle management by the 1980s. They were early and only half right. Computers automated many of the tasks that managers performed, but they never replaced the managers themselves.
In the early 2000s, Silicon Valley tried to engineer the “Great Flattening”. At Google, Larry Page soon found himself buried in expense reports and HR disputes. Managers were back within a few months. By the time I joined the company in 2005 to build its operations in China, I relied heavily on multiple layers of middle managers to get my job done. Working in a cross-cultural, multilingual organisation would not have been possible otherwise.
Today it is AI that is supposedly poised to fundamentally reshape the company hierarchy. This time it may work.
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An organisation is, in effect, an information system. Middle management arose from…
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