India, Sept. 1 -- I've sat across the table from a lot of managers over the years. High performers, deeply committed people, the kind who answer emails at midnight not because anyone told them to, but because they genuinely care. And increasingly, what I'm seeing is not ambition or drive. It's exhaustion dressed up as dedication.

Managers have quietly become the most overloaded layer in modern organisations. They're being asked to lead AI transformation, absorb their team's stress, maintain culture across hybrid setups, drive performance metrics, and navigate relentless change, often with fewer resources and almost no support directed at them personally. We talk endlessly about employee well-being. But we've largely ignored the people we...