Companies mistakenly bundle management with authority, forcing top performers onto a management track to gain influence. Separate them. Define management's role as coordination and context-sharing, allowing senior individual contributors to drive decisions without managing people.
Due to demographic shifts and a post-pandemic re-evaluation of work, employees now hold more power. This requires a fundamental leadership mindset shift: from managing people and processes to enabling their success. High turnover and disengagement are no longer employee problems but leadership failures. A leader's success now depends entirely on the success of their team, meaning 'you work for them'.
The transition to managing managers requires a fundamental identity shift from individual contributor to enabler. A leader's value is no longer in their personal output. They must ask, "Is it more important that I do the work, or that the work gets done?" This question forces a necessary focus on delegation, empowerment, and system-building.
Gamma maintains a flat, high-impact organization by eschewing traditional managers. Instead, all leaders are "player-coaches"—they actively contribute as individual contributors while also mentoring their teams. This keeps leadership close to the work and empowers teams to adapt quickly without top-down commands.
At Crisp.ai, the core value is that the best argument always wins, regardless of who it comes from—a new junior employee or the company founder. This approach flattens hierarchy and ensures that the best ideas, which often originate from those closest to the product and customers (engineers, PMs), are prioritized.
Stop defining a manager's job by tasks like meetings or feedback. Instead, define it by the goal: getting better outcomes from a group. Your only tools to achieve this are three levers: getting the right People, defining the right Process, and aligning everyone on a clear Purpose.