In a single week, three CEOs running a combined market cap north of $700 billion arrived at the same blunt conclusion: the org chart is the problem. Jamie Dimon, addressing the bureaucracy question with characteristic Queens-bred directness, didn't reach for a McKinsey deck. He reached for a noun. The "jerks," he said — the people who block change, hoard process, and weaponize approvals — are the cost center no spreadsheet captures. Brian Chesky, the same week, declared the era of the "pure people manager" over at Airbnb. Coinbase quietly stripped out layers of middle management. Accenture's Julie Sweet told an audience she had "blown up 50 years of company history" to flatten her organization — and warned the hardest part hasn't happened yet.
This is no longer a values poster. It's an operating doctrine. And it's separating the corporate world into two camps in real time.
