Why Cutting Managers Is Breaking Your Change Strategy (feat. Jordana Cole)

Cutting middle managers to save money is the trend everyone’s calling unbossing. Jordana Cole calls it a mistake dressed up as a strategy. As President and Principal Consultant at Ignited, she’s watched organizations de-layer their way into a leadership gap, then wonder why their change initiatives quietly die.

Matt Poepsel presses her on the real cost: spans of control jumping from seven direct reports to twelve, managers burning out with less support and less job security, and change efforts stalling because nobody’s left to walk them the “last mile.” Jordana argues change is a habit built one conversation at a time, not a rollout you check off a list. She also shares her “supermarket rule” for catching vague engagement survey questions before they waste a team’s time, and argues that AI should amplify a leader’s instincts instead of replacing the hard parts of the job. Oh, and she owns 14 ukuleles, which becomes relevant later.

What you’ll learn:

• Why Unbossing Backfires: Span of control has jumped from seven direct reports to twelve in some organizations, and that math quietly kills development time.
• Change Is a Habit: Sustainable change doesn’t happen at rollout. It’s built through the small, repeated conversations leaders have after the announcement.
• The Supermarket Rule: If two people could read the same engagement survey question and answer it differently, the question hasn’t done its job yet.
• AI as Amplifier, Not Replacement: Jordana trains her own AI on what energizes her and what drains her, turning it into a pattern-spotter instead of a task-taker.

Highlights:
(00:00) Meet Jordana Cole
(02:48) What convinced Jordana leadership can be taught
(05:24) Why change is a habit, not a single launch
(09:45) The burnout hiding inside middle management
(12:34) The real math behind unbossing
(16:42) Turning engagement survey scores into action
(17:53) The supermarket rule for vague survey questions
(22:05) Leadership as a facilitator of momentum
(25:26) Moving AI from replacement to amplification
(33:21) Trivia: are we smarter than AI

Resources:
Follow Jordana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordana-cole-mapp-pcc-a8445a8/
Visit Jordana’s website: https://ignitedbyjordana.com
Watch Jordana’s TEDx talk, “What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next,” on YouTube

Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/
Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex

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