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GOOD MORNING PARTY PEOPLE,

It’s Monday!!!! Not that you needed my reminder. Or my annoying chipper greeting on this fine Monday.

BUT you got it anyway!!

Summer is winding down and my fall is looking anything but chill. You can catch me here, there and everywhere and:

🎧 In your ears on the pod! This week’s episode the brilliant Aparna Rae joins me to talk about if the future of work is f*cked. Yup, you read that right. We get into it all from AI, the 4-day workweek, labor markets to climate change. It’s an episode you won’t want to miss.

📺 In front of your eyes at HR Therapy: THIS WEEK! We’re talking all things candidate experience and brand building. Reilly Cronyn & Sarika Lamont swing through for a spicy and entertaining convo. BONUS by registering and attending you’re entered to win tickets and a travel stipend to see Sabrina Carpenter at Madison Square Garden!

🏙️ On the stage at the Safe Space Summit. Chicago folks, where you at?? I’m coming to your city and bringing a killer lineup to help you address your biggest challenges at work. October 23rd we’re getting together 100 People leaders to work together on the toughest challenges we’re facing. The lineup is fire, the vibes are 100 and all that’s missing is you!

Now, onto today… the manager crisis.

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HR'S ROLE

The manager crisis:

You’ve heard me rant about managers far too many times but lately my outlook is somewhat bleak…

Why??

👀 Well, I’m looking around at quite a few factors and wondering if management is becoming an even more impossible job in the current state of things.

And since this quarter is all about things impacting your culture in real time, we gotta talk about your managers.

I mean, think about it, managers are the backbone of a company’s culture. They’re the bridge between strategy and execution, the ones who give feedback to teams, and ultimately, they set the tone of an employee’s experience.

But currently, we have middle managers are being laid off and not replaced, AI dramatically reshaping their roles faster than companies can figure out how to define what a manager does, and fewer employees actually want the top job after watching what a clusterf*ck it can be to be a manager.

Feels like the brink of a crisis, no?

Well, let’s look at each of these 3 factors and what you need to know about how to support your managers.

#1: Middle management layer being cut:

What’s happening: Companies are cutting managers during layoffs and not backfilling roles. Which means one manager ends up covering the work of two or maybe even three managers, with spans of control going beyond what’s realistic. Managers already struggle with things like giving feedback, coaching and developing their team. Now imagine they have EVEN MORE direct reports… is any of that actually going to get done? Where would they find the time…

A data point: Middle managers are overseeing TWICE as many junior staff as they did 5 years ago.

How this could be impacting your organization:

❌ Execution slows down

❌ Decision-making bottlenecks arise

❌ Employees have lost the layer that keeps strategy connected to their day to day reality

On a cultural level employees will start to feel unsupported and possibly even undervalued. When managers are stretched too thin to do the things like give feedback and build trust the culture suffers. Things start to feel more transactional and less human.

Pro Tip: If you can’t backfill a manager role, redistribute responsibilities intentionally instead of just piling them on. Give managers temporary relief via things like clear priorities, reduced admin tasks, or even funds for extra coaching support so they don’t burn out in silence. Also consider leveraging AI to help them with certain tasks!

On the note of AI…

#2: AI reshaping the manager’s role:

What’s happening: Managers are drowning in admin doing things like writing feedback, prepping performance reviews, documenting coaching conversations, juggling reporting. AI is stepping in as a silent co-pilot and doing things like drafting review language, summarizing 1:1 notes, even surfacing insights on team performance trends.

✅ Done right, AI could free managers from low-value tasks and give them more bandwidth for the human side of leadership. They could have more time to do things like build trust, coach in the moment, and connect strategy to day to day tasks.

❌ Done wrong, it risks being seen as taking the human part out of management.

Nailing this balance is critical!!

If managers lean on AI to enhance their people skills, employees could feel more seen and receive higher-quality feedback. If it’s just a replacement, culture becomes colder, more transactional and possibly even more biased.

📣 How this could impact your organization: AI can make managers’ lives easier, but without training or clear guardrails, it can be a huge risk. Some managers will lean too hard on it and potentially lose trust with their teams (no one wants to get clearly AI generated feedback), others will avoid it completely and fall behind, and some will get stuck in the messy middle.

The result could be a widening gap in leadership quality, a loss of the human side of work, and a lot of managers quietly questioning their own value. That’s how something meant to help can actually accelerate the management crisis I speak of!

Pro Tip: Teach managers to treat AI like a “first draft” partner, not the final say. Encourage them to personalize, contextualize, and humanize AI outputs. And don’t forget AI will only be as good as the inputs, teach them to be cautious and smart about what they’re inputting as context.

Double Pro Tip: you can build a custom GPT that is trained on your values, competencies, growth paths, and feedback model to help managers deliver feedback that is aligned with your organization.

#3: Lack of leadership aspirations:

What’s happening: Fewer employees want to be managers. I mean… do you blame them??? They’ve watched managers struggle with stress, low job security, and endless scrutiny… often without better pay or support.

A data point: 6% of Gen Z workers say reaching a leadership position is their primary goal. 🤯

What that means for your org: There could be a leadership vacuum where there aren’t enough people willing to step into manager roles, which disrupts succession planning and could slow organizational growth. Not to mention, so many career ladders are built around a single management track rewarding managing headcount more than other skills.

From a broader perspective of how this impacts your culture, this lack of leadership aspirations could actually go either way. If people don’t aspire to lead, authority shifts away from hierarchy and toward networks or individual expertise. Think: decentralized and distributed influence.

The upside: Teams can move faster, ideas can come from anywhere, and authority feels less rigid. This looks like a modern, flexible, community-driven culture.

The risk: Without intentional design, this could easily turn into chaos. Influence becomes uneven, cliquey, or even dependent on visibility instead of skill. ICK. Critical decisions might get made in backchannels instead of through clear processes. Employees may feel like advancement depends on politics and proximity, not performance.

Pro Tip: Redesign career paths so growth, influence and recognition don’t only come from managing people. There need to be dual tracks where employees can grow as expert individual contributors OR people leaders. And both paths deserve to be rewarded equally!!!

Redistributing influence could actually work well if set up properly! Maybe we need to rethink the manager role completely…

🎧 Ciara Lakhani joined me on the pod to talk about this lack of aspiration and why no one wants the top job anymore. Listen here for more on this topic!

Now vs then:

Tell me you know this movie ^^^ it’s a CLASSIC. Easily one of my top 10 fave movies.

Why am I talking about it? Because the name of the movie is Now and Then and it tells the story of 4 friends through a dual timeline.

And next week I'm doing my own Now and Then dual timeline because it’s Labor Day.

And I'm going to explore the labor movement then to now and what we in HR need to know.

Stay tuned!

(HUMAN) RESOURCES

I teamed up with Checkr to write about efficiency as a superpower
Denmark gives citizens copyright over their features
Several bills in CA legislature would regulate how companies use AI
The AI vibe shift
4/10 Gen Z employees report wanting to work in office

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

📚 What I’m reading: One Girl In All The World by Kendare Blake. I read another series by Blake called Three Dark Crowns and really enjoyed her writing. Then when I found out she was writing Buffy books I had to read. One Girl in All The World is actually part 2 so if you want to start reading a Buffy revival (who wouldn’t??) start with In Every Generation
📺 What I’m watching: The Hunting Wives Club. Okay what a WILD SHOW. The twists and turns and then that cliffhanger??? Binged every episode this weekend.
👋🏽 What I’m obsessing over: Cleaning out my closet. If anyone has any tips for how to effectively do this please let me know!!! It’s a daunting task… looking at my work clothes pre 2020 and wondering WTF do I do with these now that I work from home??

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SONG OF THE WEEK

🎧 HIGHER!, Dijon

When Dijon dropped his album last week I was soooo pumped.

His music genre is described as “alternative RnB” but I’m not quite sure what that means??

All I know is that I love his music and that he’s a brilliant producer.

That's all for this week! I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears.

Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you.

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