# What kind of management style is needed in the age of AI?

DevFeed: [What kind of management style is needed in the age of AI?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-kind-of-management-style-is-needed-in-the-age-of-ai-125036.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.cio.com/article/4246421/what-kind-of-management-style-is-needed-in-the-age-of-ai.html>)

Author: Masaya Mori

Published: 2026-11-10T09:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [CIO](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/cio.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [decision-making](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/decision-making.md>), [engineering-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-leadership.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [c-suite](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c-suite.md>), [c-suite-careers-it-leadership-roles](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c-suite-careers-it-leadership-roles.md>), [careers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/careers.md>), [contributor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/contributor.md>), [edition-us](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/edition-us.md>), [growth](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/growth.md>), [it-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/it-leadership.md>), [language-en](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/language-en.md>), [leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/leadership.md>), [management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/management.md>), [roles](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/roles.md>), [storytype-opinion](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storytype-opinion.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that as AI handles routine work, companies will stand out through their culture, judgment, and tacit knowledge. It presents Founder Mode--leaders staying directly connected across organizational levels while communicating strategy and preserving employee ownership--as a way to sustain Bain's Founder's Mentality: insurgency, frontline obsession, and an owner's mindset. Examples include skip-level meetings and visible initiatives; Chesky's account links delegation-centered management with bureaucracy and slow progress. The article cautions that direct involvement can become meddling, distinguishing effective Founder Mode by its strategic rationale and respect for employee judgment. It also outlines overload, stall-out, and free fall as crises that can weaken the three principles as companies grow. The author proposes that AI could make direct access to frontline insights easier by reducing information filtering and administrative work, while organizational values remain important to differentiation.

## Source excerpt

As AI increasingly takes over routine tasks and basic information processing, simply using the same AI tools as competitors is no longer enough to differentiate a company. Competitive advantage is increasingly rooted in what makes each organization unique: its philosophy, culture, and accumulated tacit knowledge. For business leaders, including CIOs, the central question is shifting from "How can AI improve efficiency?" to "How can we foster continuous growth for both our people and our organizations in the AI era?" Two influential perspectives offer valuable insights into this challenge. The first is Founder Mode, an essay published in September 2024 by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator. The second is The Founder's Mentality, a management framework developed by Bain & Company through its extensive research into the drivers of sustained corporate growth and the crises that can undermine it. Both address a fundamental challenge: as organizations expand, how can they preserve the sense of ownership, entrepreneurial energy, and intuitive decision-making that defined their early success? In this article, I explore how Founder Mode can serve as a practical leadership approach for sustaining the principles of the Founder's Mentality--and why this combination may become increasingly important for organizational growth in the AI era. Founder Mode: Rethinking the conventional wisdom of delegation As an organization grows, leaders should delegate authority to their subordinates. This is conventional management wisdom, taught in both MBA programs and corporate training courses. Graham challenged this conventional wisdom in an essay inspired by a talk given by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. In his talk, Chesky said that "the conventional wisdom about how to run large companies is mistaken." After taking the conventional advice to delegate authority, Chesky saw meetings proliferate, bureaucracy take hold, and internal divisions