Bayer’s CEO cut manager ranks by 70%. Now comes the hard part

In today’s CEO Daily: What happens after you flatten your company?

The big leadership story: Why Oura really pulled its IPO

The markets: Mostly down after the S&P 500 closed at a record high on Tuesday.

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. After you’ve streamlined and transformed and flattened your company, how do you get it to grow again? I recently asked that question to Bayer CEO Bill Anderson, who’s done all of the above at the 163-year-old health science giant. He’s reduced the number of managers from about 16,000 to 4,500 (in a company of 88,000) and replaced hierarchy and annual budgets with 5,000 small teams working on 90-day cycles. So what’s next?

“Our ambition, for the last three years, basically, was to survive,” he told me, as we sipped takeout coffee in an empty corner of New York’s Javits Center last month. “How much are we willing to stretch ourselves now and put out a bold ambition for what this company can be and fight for that?”

Good question. Bayer announced plans to invest $2.2 billion in a new Ohio manufacturing site last week. Global COO Sebastian Guth recently wrote in Fortune that the company stopped assigning sales targets. Investors are newly enthusiastic as Bayer’s stock is up 57% over the past year (versus about 21% for BASF and 14% for Novartis) but flat over the past three years (versus 43% and 47% growth, respectively). Anderson has improved........

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