Business Operations Management Evolves: Employees Now Work for Systems
In the traditional workplace, operations managers drove business success. They were the brains behind business processes, as Frederick Taylor famously explained. Managers were the business analytics engine, the logistics designer, and the quality control mechanism.
But in the modern workplace, a new approach to business management is emerging. Many companies — some without realizing it — are implementing changes in the business environment that shift power to a new type of manager.
“Managers used to organize work, but now systems will,” says Jared Navarre, Founder of Keyni Consulting and CEO of Onnix Global. “The shift comes down to priorities and rewards. Whatever the system measures, rewards, and prioritizes will now be what drives human behavior and shapes how people work.”
Navarre is a systems strategist and operational architect known for solving complex, high-stakes problems across healthcare, technology, infrastructure, and public-sector operations. He has designed resilient frameworks for humanitarian networks and guided over 250 organizations through moments of rapid change. With verified top-0.001% WAIS-IV intelligence scores — a clinical measure placing him among the highest-scoring adults ever evaluated — Navarre blends high-cognition modeling with pragmatic execution in his advisory work for Fortune-level enterprises and global institutions. In addition to his leading roles with Keyni and Onnix Global, he also serves as chairman of the humanitarian NGOs IN-Fire and Project AK-47.
“Early on, this business process reengineering will be pretty messy and reward the ‘gamers’ — people who figure out how to optimize the system without necessarily creating real value,” Navarre says. “But over time, systems tend to mature and tighten, evolving to reward the people who actually align with the intended outcomes.”
The new operations management will be driven by workflows, not org charts
In many ways, the organizational shift to system-based management processes is already underway. What gets worked on, in what order, and with what level of urgency is already being dictated by CRMs, ticketing systems, dispatch software, and other project management tools. Managers still hold a prominent place on most org charts, but they now often operate within the constraints of the system rather than fully controlling the flow of work.
“Org charts will become more and more of a fiction as this change takes hold,” Navarre explains. “The real org is now workflows, queues, automation, dashboards, etc. It’s a revolutionary shift in power and authority. Whereas managers and execs used to ‘own’ large parts of workflow and decision-making, their authority will be removed, standardized, or exposed by systems.”
Under the new approach, planning and control flow from a new epicenter. People will operate inside systems rather than under managers. The system becomes the environment they work within, defining the rules, priorities, and constraints. Managers become more like observers and system adjusters rather than direct supervisors.
The shift will also cast executives in a new role. Rather than focusing on business decisions involving teams, high-level leaders now must make decisions about infrastructure, automation, data systems, and workflows. Their focus becomes what tools get used, what gets measured, how work flows, and what gets automated.
As Navarre explains, “The people who design and control systems will have more influence than the people who manage teams.” n
When systems control business operations, employees view managers in a different light
Systems streamline operations and increase efficiency by doing a lot of the legwork for managers. They not only identify problems but also analyze what causes them and offer a variety of data-driven solutions.
But as managers move from analyzing problems themselves to choosing between options generated by systems or models, their connection to operations changes. They become less emotionally attached to the decisions, which can limit their influence and effectiveness.
“Historically, leaders would go through the data, debate it, lose sleep over it,” Navarre says. “They engaged in a process that inspired ownership. But choosing between system-generated options creates distance, even if the decision is just as important.”
Navarre warns businesses that employees will start to pick up on that distance. An employee’s perception of leadership, including how much authority managers wield, will most likely change if decisions feel like they’re coming from “the system” instead of a person. And when authority begins to be questioned, managers can have a hard time holding employees accountable for their performance.
“When decisions come from systems, accountability gets blurry,” Navarre says. “If a manager makes a bad call, that’s clear. But if a system drives a bad outcome, who owns that? The manager who oversees it? The exec who selected it? The person who designed it? The vendor? The data? Companies are going to have to answer that pretty quickly if they’re going to retain control over their workforce.”
There are certainly advantages to be gained from deploying systems in a managerial role. But there are also risks to be addressed.
As companies become more dependent on systems, they also become more fragile. With systems, a bad workflow, broken automation, or bad data can impact the entire organization almost instantly. Consequently, companies need to become experts at managing their systems if they want their systems to manage well.
“Every company is becoming an infrastructure company whether they realize it or not,” Navarre says. “Their operations depend on systems to function. When those systems break, the company breaks. At some point, leadership has to recognize that the infrastructure is the business, and start treating it that way.”
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This story was distributed as a release by Jon Stojan under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program.
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