The CEO Who Fired 11,500 Managers | Bill Anderson [ARC 2026]

Good afternoon. I borrowed a few lines from a video: 'Work is our ability to create something of value and to enjoy it... Bureaucracy is distinctly part of the fall.' We all hate bureaucracy. I've worked in companies from 30 to 100,000 people and noticed that in small companies people spend time making products, but in big companies they focus on approvals. Bureaucracy is accidental, ubiquitous, and dehumanizing. It causes a 50-70% productivity loss. I studied companies like Buurtzorg (16,000 employees, 2 managers), Nucor Steel, and Haier. They show you can escape hierarchy. I created dynamic shared ownership. In 2022, I became CEO of Bayer. We agreed mission comes first, then employees, then shareholders, then senior management. We organized around mission with thousands of mission teams. 95% of decisions go to the people doing the work. We use 90-day cycles instead of annual budgets. We reduced managers from 16,000 to 4,500. Results: everything doubles in speed. For AI, we see it as a tool to empower people to double our impact on our mission: health for all, hunger for none. AI serves people, not the other way around. There are ways to revitalize even the biggest bureaucracies. Thank you.