Quick Summary: No more bosses? Sounds bold. Let’s map out what would need to change if we replaced traditional management with shared leadership – from structure, culture, and meetings to mindset, roles, and resistance.

What if we stopped having bosses? What if leading wasn’t about hierarchy? What if leadership wasn’t tied to a title?

What if teams decided how they wanted to share leadership functions? What if teams self-organized with clear roles, shared decision-making, and a strong sense of purpose?

What if giving feedback, conflict resolution, and leadership became everyone’s responsibility, instead of just being expected from "the boss"?

What do you think?

You might think this is a powerful idea. Or reckless.

Either way, I’d like to explore: what if we stopped having bosses, what if teams self-organized – for real.

What Would We Need to Change?

If we moved away from traditional bosses, managers would need to rethink their contribution. What responsibilities would they take on now? Where could they offer the most value to the organization? Would they stay – or would they go?

With the managing functions gone, our pyramid-shaped organization would be gone. Imagine taking the top bar off a mobile – it collapses because we’ve removed the structural layer that held the whole system together.

Now, let’s pick up the pieces.

With the managers’ layer gone, what do we have left? Teams. When teams become the fundamental building blocks, we need a different organizational structure that supports them – not from above, but from around them.

Without that central boss figure, clarity becomes more important than ever. Teams would need clearly defined roles and effective ways to coordinate across many different teams without bottlenecks or confusion.

Besides the day-to-day work, we’d also need a place for practical matters. Salary discussions, vacation planning, or continuous learning would need some form of home in this new structure.

Well, most of that sounds doable – I really tried to avoid the word manageable here… – for a very small organization. But for a large one? A multinational company? We might need to consider building teams of teams to stay organized.

We would need to work in a structure stable enough to navigate complexity, but flexible enough to adapt when things shift.

That sounds tough! Would we be able to do that?

Having worked with small business owners as well as leaders and their teams in globally active organizations: my answer is no. On average, there’s still a gap between what we know and what we do. That’s why we’d need to improve our skills across the board – no pun intended. Remember, there might be no board anymore…

Keep in mind: Waving goodbye to traditional managers puts full responsibility for tasks, processes, and leadership within the teams. With no boss being around, we’d need to learn to lead ourselves.

Likewise, giving and receiving feedback, handling conflicts, and making decisions wouldn’t be extras on the side. Without these competencies, we’d be lost. So, we’d need to level up – drastically, intentionally, and continuously.

Since we’d need to organize ourselves, we’d also need to rethink how we meet. Meetings wouldn’t be about presenting, reporting and approving. They would become spaces for us to share perspectives and integrate them in our decisions.

This would require a culture where we actively participate in basically everything. I know many organizations working to build an environment of trust, honest feedback, and diversity. But within this new structure, trust, transparency and dialogue wouldn’t just be nice to have – they’d be non-negotiable.

We’d need a shared mindset, philosophy, or common language to describe how we want to approach our work. Something that permeates all teams – guiding our thinking, attitudes and actions.

We would need a deep understanding of our strengths, resources, preferences, and patterns. So, self-awareness would become essential: What energizes me? Where do I add value? In which situations can I step forward with confidence – and when might someone else be the better fit?

This self-reflection wouldn’t just serve our own personal growth; it would help us to shape our teams, our roles, and ultimately the entire organization. It would also support greater intrinsic motivation and deep sense of our significance within the organization – our purpose.

Which brings me to another fundamental change: If there’s no one person at the top holding the vision – we all need to hold it together. We’d need a shared purpose. It would be key to founding, structuring, and aligning our teams, as well as defining our vision, strategy, and goals.

When we know why we’re doing something, we’re far more likely to pull in the same direction – even without a boss.

So, what pieces are missing?

We couldn’t just flip a switch. We’d need a transformation throughout the organization, involving every. single. person. But don’t get me wrong – this wouldn’t be a long-winded optimization or slow improvement of our existing structure either.

This kind of organizational design calls for a new architecture, a cultural shift, and a fresh approach to work and people. That’s why we’d use a step-by-step pathway to move from the status quo to our new way of working.

It would require thoughtful preparation – and then, we would need to move fast. Because, let’s face it: we still have a business to run. Clients won’t wait, deadlines don’t pause, and day-to-day operations don’t magically disappear just because we’re redesigning everything.

In my opinion, yes:

With our transformation, we’d be doing open-heart surgery: It’s absolutely necessary, it requires high expertise, and ideally, you feel way better afterwards.

And the final piece? We’d be wise to expect resistance. Change can feel threatening – not only for those in established positions who may perceive a loss of privilege or power.

Sure, there would be a group who respond with excitement: curious, hopeful, and inspired.

But I’d expect many to feel skeptical, upset, reserved, cautious, anxious, overwhelmed, insecure, irritated, … Ignoring that wouldn’t make it go away – addressing it would be part of our process.

First, we need to ask ourselves what if. Then I’d be happy to explore the how.