There is an alarming trend in business that is unfolding. It's illustrated in this TechCrunch article where Jack Dorsey is laying off 80 and moving 194 to individual contributor roles at Block. I see this trend of flattening organizations at the expense of middle management as increasing because of political, societal, economic, and organizational driving forces. Quite often these roles are viewed as overhead, but clearly something must give when they are removed. What is that tradeoff?

I'm not going to argue for the value or lack thereof of middle managers. That's for each organization to decide. But I want to laser focus in on one of the core activities of middle management that, if we remove them, leaves a void in the organization.

If we reduce middle management to the point where individuals are running on their own OR where the few remaining managers have gazillions of direct reports, then the quality of feedback will seriously decline or be gone entirely. When I'm saying feedback in this context, I'm referring to four distinct types of feedback

Now I know what some of you are thinking. Managers sort of suck at feedback. You're right, many do. But many do not. And even less than perfect feedback is far better than none. So, this emergent trend of flattening organizations and remove middle management is creating a large and growing feedback void.

With the advent of AI, we should be looking at technology as a way of increasing the quality, depth, and breath of our feedback. That's exactly the mission of Catch Up AI. We're not looking to replace all managers or management. But we are looking to augment managers ability to provide great feedback. And beyond that, our mission is to increase feedback along the four dimensions we laid out earlier.

Imagine an organizational culture with ever decreasing feedback breadth and quality. To be honest, that's the direction many are heading. Now imagine an organizational culture that has a rich, broad, and deep feedback ecosystem where individuals get the directional, performance, growth, and personal feedback they need. Not only is the latter possible, but it's becoming an imperative, so which culture do you want to create?