Let me be clear about something: AI is not going to take your job.
But it is going to fundamentally change how your value is measured. And if you're not paying attention, that shift might hurt more than a layoff.
This is Part 1 of a 4-part series on AI and the future of work.
The Middle Is Disappearing
Here's a number that should get your attention: Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their organizational hierarchy, eliminating over 50% of current middle management positions.
Fifty percent.
Think about what middle management actually does. They translate strategy into tasks. They aggregate information from below and summarize it for above. They make decisions that connect the people doing the work to the people setting direction.
AI can do most of that now. Not all of it. But enough that organizations are looking at their org charts and asking hard questions about every box that sits between the frontline and the executive suite.
The decision tree of people solving problems? It's collapsing. The layers of humans who pass questions down and answers up? They're becoming optional.
Two Types of People Will Thrive
So who survives this compression? I see two categories emerging.
The Domain Expert. This is the person with bespoke knowledge that can't be easily replicated. They understand something specific and deep. Maybe it's how your particular plant's equipment behaves, or the regulatory nuances of your specific market, or the tribal knowledge of why things are done a certain way. This knowledge is essentially IP that walks around on two legs.
The Enterprise Expert. This is the person who understands how to make AI actually work within a specific business context. Not just prompting. Understanding how to connect AI capabilities to business problems in ways that create value.
The magic happens when these two combine. PwC's research shows that workers with advanced AI skills earn 56% more than peers in the same roles without those skills. But AI skills alone aren't enough. The premium comes from combining AI capability with domain expertise.
The New Measurement System
Here's what's changing: we used to measure people on output and tenure. Now we're going to measure people on leverage.
How much can you accomplish with AI augmentation? How effectively can you use these tools to multiply your domain expertise? That's the new performance metric.
77% of employers plan to upskill their staff specifically to work more effectively with AI tools. They're not doing this out of kindness. They're doing it because they're about to start measuring people differently.
Meanwhile, Gartner warns that 39% of current skills will be outdated by 2030. That's not a typo. Nearly four in ten things you know how to do today won't matter in five years.
The companies that figure this out will look very different. Fewer layers. More direct connections between people who know things and people who need to know things. More emphasis on unique human judgment and less on information processing.
The Good News
If you have genuine expertise in something that matters, your job is more secure than ever. The days of non-competes being functional protection are ending. If you don't want to lose someone who can rebuild your competitive advantage somewhere else, you have to actually retain them.
The line between "knowing how something works" and "being able to build it" used to be thick. AI is erasing that line. Which means the people who truly understand things at a deep level are becoming more valuable, not less.
The question isn't whether AI will change your work. The question is whether you'll be measured as someone who leverages it, or someone who gets leveraged out.
Next in this series: Part 2 explores how ideas are becoming the new intellectual property, and why people will become increasingly resistant to sharing them.
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