Idea in Brief

The Challenge

Digital technologies are pushing decision-making ability to the edges of the organization, allowing businesses to adopt structures that are flatter and more reconfigurable than those they have traditionally used.

Why It Matters

When AI and other software make information transparent to all authorized decision-makers on the front lines, directly and without managerial filters, it unleashes their creative and collaborative potential instead of trapping them in endless reporting and coordination loops.

How to Face It

To realize this potential, organizations must completely rethink how people work, pay painstaking attention to performance metrics, ensure that information gets to the front line, communicate the context in which decisions are made, and leverage multifunctional teams. Leaders who succeed will be those who understand how to make their people smarter at what they do.

The idea that digital technologies are fundamentally changing knowledge work is not new. We’ve been talking about the paperless office for decades. But what is less well understood is just how far technology can push decision-making to the edges of the organization, allowing businesses to adopt structures that are flatter and more reconfigurable than those they’ve traditionally used.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2023 issue of Harvard Business Review.