Managers are useless, but Management is essential

“We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes.”

Asha Sharma, XBox CEO, June 2026

This isn’t a new idea.

Andy Grove wrote in 1983: “The role of the manager here is also clear: it is that of the coach. A good coach was likely to be a good player himself at one time.”

Jack Welch later put the argument more bluntly: “Layers hide weaknesses. Layers mask mediocrity.”

Peter Drucker predicted in 1988 that companies would eventually “slash the number of management layers by half.”

Bezos later diagnosed the problem of large organizations more simply: “You’ve got middle managers, and you’ve got all these layers.”

The idea keeps coming back.

Whenever organizations become too complex, we rediscover the same thing: management can become an overhead that exists primarily to manage the management.

So, if you’re a good manager, what do you do?

Management is an activity, not necessarily a full-time job.

Someone has to coordinate, prioritize, communicate, resolve conflicts, allocate resources, make decisions, develop people and think about the future.

But it doesn’t follow that someone needs to spend 100% of their time doing those things.

A corporal in the Army leads several people. In some sense, he’s managing them.

But he is still a soldier himself. He trains with them, moves with them, fights with them and performs the same basic tasks.

He’s a player coach.

The same with a Team Leader in a team of developers. The Team Leader works with them on the project and, once in a while, as needed, she will also coach and mentor and fix some team level issues. Here too, a player coach.

At this level, leadership and production aren’t separate activities.

It’s not even necessary that the Player Coach is the best player in the team, just like the Corporal doesn’t necessarily need to be the best marksman in his squad, and it’s not a problem or a shame of there’s a really talented shooter in that team better than everyone else. But he does need to be a good shooter.

The “boss” of the small construction crew that built my neighbor’s house happened to be the cement guy.

He could just as easily have been the roofer or the plumber. In this particular crew, he happened to be the most experienced, had some management skills, had the respect of the others, and was willing to take responsibility for the team.

He did the morning planning. People came to him with problems. He dealt with suppliers and signed for deliveries.

And then he went back to laying cement.

He wasn’t managing the work all day.

He was doing the work, while making the work around him work better.

So, what do you need to be a great Player Coach?

Moving on, I’m going to give you a framework for measuring yourself, or those you are responsible for, against being good Player Coach Managers.

Based on my work with companies and individuals in or around these types of roles, I’ve identified these 8 core competencies:

1. Technical Expertise

You need the necessary expertise to work on something useful. You don’t need to know everything your team knows, be an expert at everything, but you need to have your area of expertise.

2. A generalist mindset

You need to have an overall understanding of what everyone in the team does and how it fits together into the end result.

3. Time Management

You manage your time, and you help manage (not micro manage!) the team’s time. While some team members may sometimes get lost in a task and lose track of time, you’re always aware of deadlines and overall priorities.

4. Communication

Communication is everything. With your team, explaining what’s needed, clarifying confusion, working with outside parties, upper management, clients, everything.

5. Understanding of human nature and growth

Your own self awareness, your strengths, blind spots, your motivation, your own development, and the same for everyone else, is essential to be a successful Player Coach.

6. A pragmatic mindset

This is not a theoretician or purist job. You don’t want to bring an “MBA mentality” here and start implementing processes and rules just for the sake of it. You’re trying to get the job done in the simplest and most straightforward way that works.

7. A “management on demand” attitude

The same thinking applies to your management. You’re not over managing your people, you apply a Just Enough, Just In Time mentality to your leadership. You’re not going to have a recurrent 1-1 meeting if a chat “as needed” is good enough. You’re not going to demand a written report, if a verbal confirmation is enough. Where you draw the line is different for every situation, but the principle is that you do just enough management, not more, not less.

8. Systemic Thinking & Continuous Improvement

At the same time, when it comes to competitive, high performance teams, you need a good head for seeing and understanding recurring patterns, fixing systemic problems systemically, preventing issues, and constantly raising quality, incorporating new technology and continuously evolving yourself and your team in a way that is more than intuitive.

In closing, I would say that most of the Player Coaches I’ve worked with are enjoying themselves more than “pure managers”, who are more frequently stuck in internal politics and endless planning and replanning sessions.

With a new focus on flatter, more decentralized organizational structures, the good Player Coach managers have a bigger opportunity than ever to be trusted and rewarded for their essential work.