James Seechurn is an advisor and the founder of James Alexander Consulting, where he advises companies, mostly startups, on pay, performance, and the design of trust-based workplaces. He trained as an accountant before moving into management consulting and has spent twenty years in total rewards.

He writes and speaks on why most western management systems rest on flawed assumptions about human motivation.

He is the author of What Pay Costs and Nothing Left to Take Away; his third book, Close the Gap, publishes in September 2026. He hosts the podcast Close the Gap and lives in San Francisco.

Delayering, player-coaches, spans of control blowing out.

The manager role is being rewritten and nobody agreed on the new job description. Two teams go head to head on one question: do we need managers anymore?

Expect unfiltered positions from people who have added management layers and taken them out again inside real companies, a moderator keeping them honest, and a live audience vote that settles it.

Bring your own view. You'll need it when voting opens.

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What you'll leave with:

1. A working definition of what a manager is actually for in 2026, including where new model holds up (if there is one) and where it falls over.
2. The strongest case from both sides, argued properly, so you can pressure-test your own structure instead of copying whatever the last big flattening announcement did.
3. Practical signals for when to add or strip a management layer, and what you have to fund instead when you take one out.