This company is getting rid of bosses, wants employees to manage themselves

Bill Anderson took over as CEO of Bayer in June 2023. When he became CEO, the company’s handbook on rules and procedures exceeded 1,300 pages – longer than the tome “War and Peace.” The feedback from workers focused on one thing: it’s tough to get anything done with so much management.

"They basically said: 'Increasingly, we can't get anything done,'" Anderson told Business Insider. "It's just too hard to get ideas approved, or you have to consult with so many people to make anything happen."

With that in mind, Anderson is getting rid of middle management in a plan he calls “dynamic shared ownership.” The plan will also have another advantage: it will cut organisational costs by about $2.17 billion.

In March this year, Anderson wrote a piece for Fortune magazine where he addressed the problem of hierarchy. “We have excellent people, with expertise in a range of disciplines and exceptional commitment to our success. But they are trapped in 12 levels of hierarchy, which puts unnecessary distance between our teams, our customers, and our products,” he wrote.

“At Bayer, we have begun a massive effort to redesign every job and every process, with a radical focus on customers and products. Most importantly, we’re putting 95% of decision-making in the hands of the people actually doing the work. This means many fewer managers and layers, and replacing hierarchical annual budgets with 90-day sprints by self-directed teams,” he explained.