Lindsay Dagiantis is the founder of blueprintHR, where she works as a fractional Chief People Officer for founders and CEOs. With 20+ years as an HR practitioner and operator, she's the person CEOs call when they need to talk shop about the business and the people function.

She is someone who can hold both the strategic and human sides of a decision at once. Lindsay works across industries from medspas to manufacturing to tech, and brings a peer-level, in-the-trenches perspective that comes from actually building and running people functions, not just advising on them.

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.