Is the org chart dead in the age of AI? LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer thinks so

The humble org chart isn’t usually blamed for holding back innovation. But as companies push their employees to adopt AI, LinkedIn executive Aneesh Raman thinks the relationships that structure most workplaces are what’s holding things back.

“The org chart was built in the industrial age to bring order, predictability, and stability to rapidly growing organizations,” says Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer and co-author of a new book on the future of work. “Companies need to let that go, as it’s going to hold back innovation.”

Instead of waiting for top-down transformation programs, Raman argues, executives will need to get comfortable with workers figuring out AI on their own, even if those experiments cut across departments and job descriptions. “Where you’re going to see the real returns on AI isn’t just a new workflow around AI, but rather new work around human capability,” he says.

Raman, a former CNN war correspondent and Obama speechwriter, is the co-author of Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, alongside Linkedin CEO Ryan Roslansky. The book draws on LinkedIn data and case studies of early adopters to offer what he calls a “how-to-human-with-AI” playbook that tries to counter the “fatalism” that dominates most conversations about AI’s effect on employment.

He urges workers to think about their work, and how AI relates to it, in three categories. The first bucket covers activities AI already does today, like generating........

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