Alex Cannon |
Efficiency has replaced growth as a new status symbol. It’s hard to go a day without coming across a narrative that touts headcount cuts as proof of fiscal discipline. But in a moment when organizations need to be more focused on resilience than ever, this dogma risks hollowing out futures by erasing an essential layer that makes them possible: the middle.
When the middle-skill jobs disappear, so does the next generation of leaders.
Traditional succession planning, which stops well before the middle, leaves early high-potential talent with nothing sturdy to climb. At the very moment those layers are being overlooked, AI is being used to accelerate their erosion. Gartner estimates that through 2026, one in five companies will use AI to flatten org structures.
Those most at risk tend to be middle managers. Earlier this year at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit, Bayer Pharmaceuticals COO Sebastian Guth described eliminating 40% of middle manager roles as part of a “dynamic shared ownership” model. The result was a network of empowered teams, faster decision-making, and a 23% bump in Q1 revenue in North America.
It’s an appealing story. Flattening can deliver visible, immediate wins: fewer bottlenecks, leaner budgets, quicker calls.
Yet short-term gains can mask deeper cracks. Korn Ferry’s 2025 workforce survey found that 4 in 10 employees report their organization has cut management layers, and more than a third reported feeling directionless without managerial guidance.
If middle-skill employees are the invisible infrastructure of an organization, then the middle layer can be thought of as a leadership R&D lab.
Advertising executive Rory Sutherland calls this the “doorman fallacy.” Imagine a hotel replacing the doorman with automatic doors, only to see a drop in bookings, people loitering outside, and guests feeling less safe. The same trap plays out when leaders conflate visible output with whole value. Org flattening is legible and easy to measure which makes it easy to overvalue. Human work is messier and harder to measure, which makes it easier to undervalue.
Succession planning: 5 things HR can do to treat your workforce like a leadership system
If middle-skill employees are the invisible infrastructure of an organization, then the middle layer can be thought of as a leadership R&D lab. This is where future leaders learn how the business works, refine potential, prepare for higher-stakes roles, and develop the judgement AI can’t replicate.
Resilience-focused succession planning can build readiness across whole cohorts. Its strength comes from being distributed, developing leadership capacity systematically instead of concentrating it at the top. These moves keep the lab running and leadership pipelines intact:
1. Expand the frame of succession.
Build development pathways for groups of employees at the same level. Track readiness across cohorts. Use internal mobility data to identify “near-ready” clusters and design shared stretch assignments that expose them to cross-functional leadership moments.
2. Protect launchpad roles.
Safeguard entry- and mid-level positions that feed into leadership paths. Even during a re–org, tag these roles as pipeline-critical in workforce planning conversations to help shelter them from elimination.
3. Measure bench strength as a resilience KPI.
Track time-to-fill and time-to-readiness for internal roles, and report them with the same rigor as revenue growth. Compare those metrics across business units where possible; gaps can reveal where leadership pipelines are collapsing.
4. Deploy AI as an accelerator, not a replacement.
Free middle managers from repetitive tasks so they can focus on mentoring and leadership development. AI-assisted tools can help employees cover time for business-aligned upskilling and coaching time.
5. Run a leadership stress test.
Simulate a vacancy in a critical role tomorrow. If the successor is uncertain, you’ve identified a stress fracture. Document fractures and assign clear owners to close each one. Succession readiness should live in the same dashboard as financial risk. Advocating for including these metrics in Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) dashboards or similar enterprise risk-tracking could also be a way for HR to integrate and collaborate more with Finance.
Companies can’t ask for a nimble workforce while eroding the pathways that make mobility possible. At its core, succession planning is the work of resilience. It won’t be built in a quarter, but it grows every time an organization protects the roles that develop people and invests in the future leaders who will carry it forward.
