We Broke the Role of Manager. It’s Time to Fix It.

Let’s be honest.

We’ve broken the role of the manager...and we did it on purpose. In the pursuit of efficiency, we stripped away leadership. In the name of lean operations, we gutted development. And somewhere along the way, we stopped letting managers actually manage.

We turned them into glorified individual contributors with a fancier title. We called it agility. We said it was modern. We convinced ourselves it was smart business.

But it’s not. It’s costing us...deeply.

“Super IC” Isn’t Leadership

Look around your organization. How many managers are drowning in deliverables, sitting in back-to-back meetings, juggling dashboards, and pulling late nights; not for their teams, but for their own tasks?

That’s not leadership. That’s managerial malpractice at scale, and we’re normalizing it. We expect managers to lead and execute at the same time, but then punish them if they fall short in either.

This isn’t a talent problem. It’s a system problem.

Friedman’s Ghost Is Still Running Your Company

You can trace this dysfunction back to a single idea: Milton Friedman’s doctrine that the sole purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value.

That idea infected boardrooms. It shaped compensation. It told executives to squeeze every ounce of “efficiency” out of every layer, including management.

What did we lose? Middle management. Leadership capacity. Coaching. Culture. Humanity.

We got leaner. We also got weaker.

Managers Are Burning Out. Teams Are Treading Water.

This model doesn’t serve anyone:

• Employees are disengaged and underdeveloped.

• Managers are overwhelmed, unsupported, and exiting.

• Organizations are bleeding talent and watching trust evaporate.

Meanwhile, we keep promoting high performers into management without adjusting the job. We hand them two full-time roles, leader and executor, and we call that a “promotion.”

It’s not a promotion. It’s a setup.

If You Want Results, Let Managers Lead

This isn’t a plea for more kumbaya. This is a call for better business.

You want performance? Engagement? Retention? Innovation?

Then let managers lead. Actually lead.

• Take work off their plate.

• Stop grading them on outputs they share with their teams.

• Train them to coach, develop, and inspire; not just to deliver.

• Reward them for building high-performing people, not just spreadsheets.

The companies that win the future will be the ones that build real leadership at every level...not just at the top.

This Is a Callout and a Call Forward

If you're a CEO or CHRO still clinging to the "do more with less" playbook, this is your moment of reckoning.

The old model is breaking. And it will break you, too, unless you change.

It’s time to stop treating managers like Swiss Army knives. They’re not here to do everything. They’re here to lead.

So let them.