For decades, the team was the bedrock of work. The org chart was the map. Managers managed. Teammates collaborated. Work happened in predictable, bounded structures. But that world no longer reflects reality.
Today, the classic org chart—neat hierarchies and fixed roles—fails to show how work actually gets done. Instead, work is increasingly fluid, cross-functional, and dynamic. People move across projects, functions, and even organizational boundaries. And now, they do so alongside AI agents that draft documents, summarize conversations, automate workflows, and help make decisions faster.
This shift demands a new way of thinking about how we organize ourselves. The answer isn’t better teams. It’s communities.
The Death of the Traditional Org Chart
For much of the 20th century, scaling an organization meant hiring more people. The org chart expanded accordingly, with well-defined roles and clear lines of accountability. Managers were responsible for extracting value from their teams, ensuring work stayed on track.
That model started to crack about a decade ago. The rise of platforms and ecosystems let organizations access talent without owning it outright. Freelancers, gig workers, outsourcing, and partnerships became common, creating networks of value rather than monolithic hierarchies.
Now, with AI woven into every workflow, organizations don’t just have people on demand—they have intelligence on demand. Instead of adding headcount, companies scale capability through AI agents that handle tasks once performed by humans. The "team" is now made up of both people and technology.
But while technology has transformed work execution, it hasn't addressed a deeper human need: connection and belonging. We still need structures that help us align, collaborate, and find purpose together.
That’s where communities come in.
Why Teams Fall Short in a Fluid World
Traditional teams were built for stability. They assumed stable objectives, clear ownership, and defined accountability under a single manager. We invested heavily in "teambuilding" to create long-term bonds meant to weather predictable challenges.
But today’s work is anything but predictable. A product designer might work on a customer journey initiative led by marketing, while also advising on an AI pilot with IT. Meanwhile, AI agents handle routine parts of these workflows autonomously. The old idea of a fixed team starts to feel not just outdated, but inefficient.
Work is increasingly organized around problems, not departments. People come together to solve those problems and then move on. This shift is captured in what Microsoft calls the “work chart”—a more accurate map of real collaboration.
To make that map actionable, organizations need structures as fluid as the work itself. That structure isn’t the traditional team. It’s the community.
Communities Reflect How Work Actually Happens
Unlike teams, which are assigned, communities form around purpose. They emerge around shared challenges, interests, or domains. People join because they have something to contribute—or something to learn. Membership is flexible. Leadership is often informal. Value comes from participation, not hierarchy.
Importantly, these aren’t just social spaces. When designed intentionally, work communities become vital infrastructure:
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They break down silos by enabling knowledge to flow across boundaries.
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They create redundancy by spreading expertise beyond any one person or team.
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They make work visible in ways that reduce duplication, accelerate learning, and spark innovation.
In a world where AI agents now do the checklist work, human collaboration becomes even more critical. We no longer need each other to execute tasks; we need each other to make sense of complexity, to ask better questions, and to find meaning in the work we do.
The Changing Role of Managers
This evolution transforms the manager’s role, too. In the old model, managers assigned tasks, tracked progress, and maintained control. In a world of fluid work and autonomous agents, the manager’s job is less about command-and-control and more about context-setting.
Managers need to enable clarity, facilitate flow, and support collaboration across dynamic ecosystems. But they can’t do it alone. They need structures that help people find each other, align quickly, and share knowledge freely. They need spaces where humans and agents contribute visibly, iterate openly, and build on each other’s work.
Teams weren’t designed for that. Communities are.
How to Make the Shift From Teams to Communities
The good news? This transition doesn’t require a massive reorg. It starts with small, intentional moves:
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Enable self-organization around meaningful problems.
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Create shared digital spaces where contributions—human or AI—are visible and connected.
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Recognize impact over titles, valuing contributions for what they achieve.
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Assign facilitators instead of managers—people focused on keeping work flowing, not controlling it.
Over time, these shifts build a new kind of organizational muscle. People stop waiting for permission or assignments and start stepping into opportunities. Information stops flowing strictly up and down the hierarchy and begins to move outward through the network. Static teams give way to adaptive, resilient communities that reflect how work actually happens.
Designing for Reality
In the end, there’s little point in clinging to the idea that productivity depends on rigid, fixed teams. Instead, organizations should design for the reality of work today: that people and AI agents will form fluid, evolving collaborations, and that our structures need to support this flexibility.
The classic org chart gave us teams. The new work chart moves us beyond them, into communities. Communities don’t just make work visible—they make it possible.
If we want to unlock the full potential of human and AI collaboration, communities are the structure we need.