The last manager

Book excerpt: Imagine a world without managers. A world where you do your work, like you think it should be done, without having to account for your time. "The eight thousand nurses at Buurtzorg, a Dutch home care services company, work in teams and manage everything themselves from drafting their own schedules to finding office space. The clients are more than satisfied and the company is thirty percent less expensive." Science fiction? No, everywhere in the world, managers are being laid off. If the trend continues, in ten years the manager will be added to the list of endangered species. Will it be an ecological disaster? No, because he will leave a team of well-trained and motivated employees behind who are capable of managing their work for themselves. Managers are a dying breed. Read this inspiring book on how more companies and organizations are relying on their entrepreneurial, autonomous professionals. Ben Kuiken is a Dutch author and philosopher. He also wrote the management books De Pretfactor and Eerste Hulp bij Nieuw Organiseren