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Welcome to the HBR IDAcast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard.

Managers today are overwhelmed, and that's because their jobs were designed for a different

kind of work world. One where people clocked in at factory stores or desk jobs. The tasks

and teams didn't change much, and a boss's job was to push for great performance. But times

have definitely changed. Thanks to rapid technological innovation, flattening hierarchies, agile

work, and new attitudes about talent, managers have to do more than ever. Their spans of controller

bigger and more fluid, they're responsible not just for business results, but also for employee

development, organizational culture, and digital transformation. They're expected to lead teams

and projects flexibly, remotely, and with empathy. It is a lot. In fact, today's guest says it

might be too much. She has some advice on how to shift managers roles so they're less overwhelmed

and more effective. Linda Gratin is a professor of management practice at London Business School,

and the founder of HSM, the Future of Work Research Consultancy. She's the co-author along with

Diane Gerson of the HBR article, Managers Can't Do It All, and the new book, ReDesigning Work.

Linda, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, Anderson.

What exactly has happened over the past decade to make the role of manager too much

for so many of us to handle? Well, actually, we've been asking managers how they're

feeling for some years now. And, you know, I think the combination of

process re-engineering, we've digitalised many of the jobs, we've asked them to work in an agile

way. And hybrid, I think, was just the final straw, actually. And now, two years into hybrid,

...