“Is artificial intelligence coming for your job? More likely your title. When I worked at Bell Labs, it distributed organization charts weekly detailing the stacked hierarchy of supervisors, department heads, division heads and directors reporting up to a vice president. I was deep in the muck. One day, AT&T produced a top-down org chart: chairman, president, senior VPs, executive VPs and first VPs. Held above the division chart on my wall, I realized there was a gap. They didn't match up. So many titles and layers. No wonder AT&T missed every major technology transition after the transistor.
Org charts are over. Their history gives some clues as to why.
Armies have always been organized on authority -- the Greek phalanx, Roman legions, Napoleon's corps system [1].
Driven by battle plans, they're top down, command and control. Everyone has a rank.
Leaders transmit information to foot soldiers.
But when the New York & Erie Railroad created the first business org chart in the 1850s, capturing the complexity of the railroad's signaling and communications, it resembled a tree. Leaders were at the roots and the chart's many branches showing how information flowed through the company and rail lines.
In 1917, the Tabulating Machine Co. (now IBM) went back to the military's top-down org chart -- the model we're stuck with today. Everyone has a title, a boss. Clear lines of authority. Employees might as well work in a phalanx.
A century later, the faults persist: Org charts add latency. They freeze strategies and processes in place. You practically have to fire the CEO to change the organization -- the Journal reports about 1 in 9 was replaced last year. And org charts restrict job flexibility. Admit it, you've looked at tasks and said, "Not my job."
The interim solution was chief (insert buzzword) officers -- the famed C-Suite that magically transcends the org chart. First came chief finance, operating, admin, tech and marketing officers. Then came chief revenue, people, knowledge, data, innovation, security, compliance, sustainability, product, content and legal officers. What do they even do?
It's becoming comical: chief heart, well-being and happiness officers, even chief vibes and inspiration officers. Add the National Football League's new chief kindness officer. The site ChiefJobs lists 146 chief titles. Who does comedian Druski, T-Mobile's chief switching officer, report to?
Now there are too many "chiefs." They do supply a cheat code to flex authority away from the org chart's lines of command. But the real solution is to flatten the org chart, cut some layers. Communication tools like Slack try to do that so info flows evenly. The larger the organization, the tougher it is to flatten, keeping it slow, rigid and blind.
It's 2026. CEOs will simply use AI and agents to make decisions, right? Input the org chart and out pop commands for everyone. Last week, Block cut 40% of its workforce, partially because of "intelligence tools" it has "paired with smaller and flatter teams." But as always, it's what's hidden that matters. The latest lingo bingo words are AI agents, context and business ontology. Consultants are making a fortune evangelizing these terms. But what do they mean?
Think of agents as autonomous digital bots that roam up and down a company probing and executing its business process. How items are sold, deals are closed, or inputs are procured. The dream is to have successful agents that efficiently and automatically restructure the organization to optimize the business constantly. Possible? Eventually.
But first agents need to understand how the company really works. They need the "context" -- a company's living, breathing ecosystem with "decision traces," the history of every decision made, every prospect considered, every process used or discarded. Things like "we were a close second and lost that deal but are ready to step in." Where is that snippet stored today? In someone's memory. A context graph captures the sequence of decisions -- the why. Not a snapshot like an org chart, but a movie with millions of potential plots.
Then think of "business ontology" as a digital, machine-readable version of the company, like the New York & Erie Railroad's signaling tree. Something agents can traverse and adjust. Palantir made a multibillion-dollar business out of this at the high end, digitizing the movement of information and how people operate [2]. This will spread to every business as it gets cheaper. But not overnight.
As old jobs, titles and charts are destroyed, people are still important to help capture the quickly changing landscape and constant decisions -- each person makes 35,000 decisions a day, one study claims. Watch for the creation of new jobs and job descriptions that tap the coming flexibility, decoupling and flattening -- most likely at brand-new, quick-on-their-feet companies.
Finding what's unwritten, tricks of the trade, and the view of the constantly changing competitive landscape will create new winners. The future is no longer command and control but loosely coupled organizations, with task-oriented employees constantly updating and getting guidance from AI agents. Good riddance org charts. Everyone is a chief.” [3]
1. Napoleon’s corps system (corps d'armée) was a revolutionary military organization where the army was divided into self-sufficient mini-armies (20,000–30,000 men) containing infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Developed to manage massive conscripted forces, this structure allowed corps to move independently on parallel roads, foraging locally, while staying within a day's march of each other to concentrate for battle.
Key Aspects of the Napoleonic Corps System
Structure & Composition: Each corps (usually commanded by a Marshal) included two or more infantry divisions, a cavalry brigade, artillery, engineers, and supply trains.
Operational Flexibility: The bataillon carré (battalion square) marching formation allowed for rapid adaptation, letting the corps operate independently or unite quickly.
Strategic Advantages:
Speed: Separating the army allowed for faster marching, often using multiple, parallel routes.
Self-Sufficiency: Corps could survive independently for 24-48 hours while awaiting reinforcements.
Combined Arms: Each unit was a balanced force, not dependent on immediate support from a different type of unit.
Command & Control: Napoleon delegated authority to Marshal commanders, reducing his own management load and allowing them to make tactical decisions based on the situation.
Logistical Support: By spreading out, corps reduced the strain on local resources, making it easier to live off the land compared to a single, massive army.
This system allowed the Grande Armée to consistently outmaneuver opponents between 1805 and 1812, with the strategy often aiming to deceive the enemy about the main force's location until it was too late to react.
2. Palantir has built a multibillion-dollar business by creating AI-powered data integration platforms—Gotham and Foundry—that centralize, analyze, and visualize massive, siloed datasets for government agencies and large corporations. Their software functions as a "digital twin" of an organization, enabling real-time decision-making, operational analysis, and, more recently, AI-driven automation.
Key Aspects of Palantir's Business:
Core Platforms:
Gotham: Used by intelligence and defense agencies for tracking, counter-terrorism, and data analysis.
Foundry: Designed for commercial enterprises to integrate data, allowing for predictive analytics and operational efficiency.
AIP (Artificial Intelligence Platform): Integrates large language models (LLMs) with customer data, enabling automation and decision-making on the front lines.
Apollo: Manages the deployment of software across public and private clouds.
Business Model:
High-End Contracts: Revenue is driven by large, multi-year contracts, often ranging from $2 million to $50 million.
Expansion: Strong growth in the U.S. commercial sector, which grew nearly 900% in five years.
Strategic Function:
Data Fusion: Integrates structured and unstructured data, from sensor feeds to text documents, to create a "common operating picture".
Ontology: A, core concept in their platform that represents an organization's operations, security, and objects digitally.
Palantir's ability to turn messy, fragmented data into actionable insights has made it a central, albeit sometimes controversial, tool for both national security and corporate logistics.
3. Inside View: AI Frees the Corporate Phalanx. Kessler, Andy. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 Mar 2026: A13.
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