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AI exposes the layers, hand-offs and busy work inside a company. Stephen Forte explains why leaders should redesign the work before cutting jobs or flattening the organization.
In this episode:
- Three restructuring announcements. NiCE, Canva and SUSE named AI among their reasons for change, alongside other business pressures. These are not simply AI layoffs.
- Readiness exposes waste. Preparing for AI reveals weak data, inappropriate access and the hand-offs between a request and a result.
- Double clutter. Email and Excel create work on both sides of a request. Count the relays before changing the org chart.
- Sequence the change. A Harvard Business School AI Institute working paper links AI capabilities with flatter hierarchies and wider managerial spans. The effects were stronger where people had the skills to use the technology; they were not automatic.
- Evolution, not revolution. Reinvent the work first, then decide which layers to remove and how to organize the people you need.
- Operational expertise matters. The people who understand accounting, sales or marketing can tell an agent what good looks like. Tool knowledge alone is not enough.
- Train people and remove friction. Investment in training signals confidence in the team. Start by automating the spreadsheets and recurring reports people hate, giving them back the work they were hired to do.
- One practical starting point. Pick one process, count its hand-offs and emails, automate the frustrating part, then reassess the layers.
Sources:
The AI Brief from the YPO Technology Network is a daily executive briefing on the AI developments that matter to business leaders. Hosted by Stephen Forte.
