The Future of Leadership: Will There Be Fewer Leaders?

All courses / AI Leader / Module 6 / Chapter 29

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Classify statements about the future of leadership as observable, expected or speculation, and state the posture each label justifies.
• Compare the four trajectories by their evidence and by what would have to be shown before a ceiling is raised.
• Distinguish the question of fewer layers from the question of fewer people who answer.
• Draft entries of a horizon register with trigger, posture, owner and review date.

Key concepts

Horizon register

A list of trends, not a forecast. Each entry has the trend in one sentence, its label, the functions concerned, the evidence, the trigger that would change the label, the posture, an owner and a review date. It is valuable because it can be wrong in a reviewable way.

Commit, prepare, keep reversible

The posture follows the label: an observable trend justifies commitment, an expected one preparation and a speculative one reversibility. The author's projections carry a fourth marking and one of the three labels as well.

Fewer layers or fewer answerers

The chapter treats 'fewer leaders?' as two questions and answers them separately. Coordination posts may fall, but the number of persons named to answer for consequential decisions is not expected to fall in step with the tasks automated.

A limit outside the agent

In the one public experiment with an agent-run shop, the failures that cost money were failures of the policy point, not of the arithmetic. The chapter's own conclusion is that a limit on discounts held outside the agent is the kind of control the book asks for.

Thresholds that would change the projection

Five observations would change the author's view. The first and highest is independent, multi-year evidence that organisations which remove accountable human layers achieve better outcomes, fewer harms and more legitimacy than those that keep named, reachable decision-makers.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. The case for concern is a chain of reasonable steps, none of which is a decision to have fewer leaders. Which step in that chain has your organisation already taken, and was it recorded as a decision?
2. A flatter organisation that removes the layer which was the named oversight person must rename someone. Who would that be in your organisation, and could that person pass Explain and Reach?
3. Both sides accept that pace is decided by choices made now. Which of the four choices, ceilings, spans, junior intake and independent sources, is least visible to your board?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. How does the verdict label the claim that organisations will become flatter?

   1. The direction is observable and the pace is expected
   2. The direction is expected; the pace and the size of any cut are speculation
   3. Both the direction and the pace are speculation, since no stated trend supports either
   4. Both direction and pace are observable in Eurostat data
   Show the answer

   B. The direction is expected; the pace and the size of any cut are speculation
   Fewer coordination tasks held by people is an expected direction. The pace and the size of cuts rest on an analyst's prediction with no measurement behind it, so they are labelled speculation.

2. What does the chapter conclude from the experiment in which a model operated a small office shop for about a month?

   1. That agent-run units will become profitable as soon as the underlying models have been replaced
   2. That agents cannot perform the arithmetic that pricing and stock decisions require
   3. That the costly failures lay in the policy point, so a limit held outside the agent is needed
   4. That customers will refuse to buy from a shop that has no human manager present
   Show the answer

   C. That the costly failures lay in the policy point, so a limit held outside the agent is needed
   The agent priced below cost and was talked into discounts. What a better set-up would do is speculation in either direction; the chapter's own conclusion concerns the missing limit outside the agent.

3. Which observation is the first of the five thresholds that would refute the author's projection P1 and the thesis of the book?

   1. A further fall in entry-level hiring in AI-exposed occupations in the United States
   2. A benchmark on which an agent completes more than half of the tasks of a simulated company
   3. A vendor survey reporting that most organisations have appointed a chief AI officer
   4. Independent, multi-year evidence that organisations removing accountable human layers achieve better outcomes, fewer harms and more legitimacy
   Show the answer

   D. Independent, multi-year evidence that organisations removing accountable human layers achieve better outcomes, fewer harms and more legitimacy
   The projection is worth holding only if it can be wrong in a reviewable way. Both sides of the debate accept that this multi-year outcome evidence does not yet exist and that it would settle the matter.