Everyone wants to move faster. And it is exactly the rush for speed that makes companies cut or skip the part that was making the work function, the human part. This episode has only two themes, on purpose, because both tell the same story from different angles.
In the first, Deloitte shows, through one of the largest yearly studies of work, more than 9,000 leaders across 89 countries, that companies installing AI first and thinking about the process later are nearly twice as likely to miss the expected return. It is not the technology that fails, it is the order in which it is installed.
In the second, the math many companies are doing right now, cutting the middle manager to gain speed, runs into two independent surveys, PwC and Randstad, that point to the same place. The one who keeps the best people on a team is the direct manager, not the name at the top of the org chart. The company cuts the very person who was holding the team together.
In the end, the two themes meet in the same question. Where is speed making you skip the human step that was, deep down, the one delivering the result?
Sources:
Deloitte, 2026 Global Human Capital Trends, with Oxford Economics, more than 9,000 leaders across 89 countries. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html
PwC, Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025, almost 50,000 workers across 48 countries. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/workforce/hopes-and-fears.html
Randstad, Workmonitor 2026, 27,000 workers across 35 markets. https://www.randstad.com/workmonitor/
Gartner, October 2024 projection on flattening and middle management.
Live Data Technologies, manager decline reported by the Wall Street Journal.
