Going direct

After a series of posts on LLMs, we’re returning to management fundamentals.

This month, we’re building upon the cultural shift that management has experienced recently: smaller, leaner and tighter orgs. We’ll build upon concepts from our previous articles: new advice for aspiring managers, should managers still code?, and being in the details.

This article, plus those listed above, reflect a new and expected management style for the current era: more hands-on, detail-oriented, and direct. This shift is driven by tighter economic conditions and the push for AI-driven efficiency.

Let’s examine the concept of “going direct.”

Going direct means empowering everyone on your team to communicate openly and directly, without unnecessary intermediaries. This communication can be lateral (peer-to-peer) or diagonal (across different departments and levels), bypassing formal reporting chains.

Org charts are essential for defining roles, ownership, and facilitating performance management. However, people often mistakenly believe these charts also dictate communication paths, feeling obligated to follow the hierarchy. At best, this requires irritating message-passing. At worst, it dramatically