Many experiments in self-organization begin by challenging the manager or the hierarchy. That can be necessary, but it is incomplete. A manager is not only a person with power. The role often bundles many coordination functions into one place.
They remember context. They interpret signals. They prioritize. They allocate resources. They connect teams. They make decisions when responsibility is unclear. They notice when something is drifting. They often absorb tension before it reaches the wider group.
Unbundle the function from the person
The interesting question is not whether those functions should disappear. It is whether they can become shared, visible, and learnable infrastructure.
Management can become a protocol rather than a permanent concentration of context and judgment.
Shared memory can replace founder recall. Explicit decision domains can replace constant permission seeking. Visible commitments can replace informal follow-up. Tension protocols can make repair a collective capacity instead of something one person quietly carries.
Coordination still needs form
A managerless group is not a formless group. In many cases it needs more explicit structure, because the structure can no longer hide inside one person's head.
The aim is not to eliminate leadership. It is to let leadership become contextual: authority can move toward the people with the relevant knowledge, proximity, and responsibility, then change again when the situation changes.