Roles usually represent bottlenecks. Some functions have political power in org charts—finance and operations being prime examples. These positions exist because they control information flow and decision-making chokepoints.
The Spreadsheet Precedent
Spreadsheets didn't change software per se. They changed who needed to talk to whom.
Before spreadsheets, getting numbers meant going through someone. After spreadsheets, all numbers and metrics could be collected in one place, accessible to anyone who needed them. The gatekeepers became less essential.
AI will do the same for roles around co-ordination, versus roles around judgement and constraint setting.
Agent-style tools will act as an informal chief of staff, shifting some roles from doing to specifying, reviewing, and escalating work.
The Cloud Computing Parallel
Cloud shifted political power from central IT (servers on-prem) to distributed teams (off-prem). The Cloud & Infrastructure function didn't exist 10 years ago—that's a power shift that restructured entire organizations.
Cloud accelerated the pace at which teams could experiment. No more waiting for IT to provision servers. No more lengthy approval processes for infrastructure.
AI will do the same for roles around co-ordination.
The Informal Chief of Staff
A model that can read email, tickets, dashboards, and propose actions is effectively an informal chief of staff for every employee.
This doesn't just increase productivity. It changes:
- Who needs an assistant
- Who needs a team
- Where the org bottlenecks currently are
The bottlenecks don't disappear—they move. And when bottlenecks move, org structures have to follow.
The Org Design Change
This means an org design change is coming. Some roles shift from doing work to:
- Specifying work
- Checking work
- Escalating work
Other roles will shrink because the co-ordination overhead they manage now gets partially or totally automated away by an AI agent.
From 2026, AI will start changing management layers.
From 2026, AI will start changing hiring needs.
Adapting Faster Than Before
Span of control assumptions, management layers, and hiring plans will need to adapt faster than previous cycles.
The companies that recognize this early won't just have better tools—they'll have fundamentally different organizational structures. Flatter where AI handles coordination. Deeper where human judgment matters.
The question isn't whether AI will change how organizations work. It's whether your organization will adapt proactively or be forced to restructure reactively.
The org chart is the next thing to be eaten.