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That's not a fantasy. It's happening right now across Europe. And the lessons from Swedish fintechs and Dutch mortgage advisors are about to reshape how creative professionals work.
The old way is breaking
For over a century, businesses operated the same way. You had bosses at the top, workers at the bottom, and layers of managers in between. Those middle layers existed for a simple reason: leaders couldn't keep track of everyone. So they hired people to watch over other people.
This made sense when you were running a factory floor with hundreds of workers. It made less sense when you were running a design agency with twelve people. But we kept the structure anyway.
Now that structure is falling apart. Fast.
A recent study found that a traditional ten-person software team can be replaced by just three people: a product owner, an AI-skilled engineer, and a systems architect. The other seven roles? Handled by AI tools or simply not needed anymore.
For creative businesses, this changes everything.
What the Swedes learned the hard way
Klarna is a Swedish payments company that went all-in on AI. They cut their workforce by 40% after claiming their AI assistant was doing the work of 700 customer service agents.
Then something went wrong. Customer satisfaction dropped. Service quality became inconsistent. The CEO admitted they'd focused too much on cutting costs and not enough on what customers actually needed.
Now they're hiring humans again. But with a twist. They're using a flexible model where AI handles the routine stuff and humans step in for the complex problems [Reworked].
The lesson isn't that AI doesn't work. The lesson is that replacing humans entirely backfires. The winning formula is humans plus AI, not humans or AI.
The Dutch model that actually works
Want to see what a creative business could look like without traditional management? Look at Viisi.
Viisi is a Dutch mortgage advisory firm with about 65 employees. They have no middle managers. No fixed job descriptions. Everyone knows what everyone else earns. They were named Best Employer in the Netherlands four years in a row.
Their approach flips the usual priorities. They put their people first, customers second, shareholders last. It sounds backwards until you realize happy people do better work, which makes customers happy, which makes money.
Another Dutch company, Buurtzorg, runs 900 self-managing teams with over 15,000 nurses. The entire organization has zero middle managers. Just two directors and 21 coaches. Their overhead costs are 8% compared to the industry average of 25%.
These aren't tech companies playing games with organizational theory. These are real businesses serving real customers. And they're proving that small, empowered teams outperform bloated hierarchies.
Why this matters for creative work
If you're a designer, a music producer, a brand strategist, or any kind of creative professional, pay attention.
The old model said you needed account managers, project managers, creative directors, junior designers, senior designers, and so on. Layers upon layers. Each layer taking a cut, slowing things down, and diluting the creative vision.
The new model says a small team with the right AI tools can match the output of a much larger traditional team. One study found individuals using AI delivered nearly 40% better performance, matching what entire teams used to produce. AI-augmented teams were three times more likely to come up with breakthrough ideas [Fortune].
For independent designers and small studios, this is huge. You can now compete with agencies ten times your size. Not by working harder, but by working smarter.
What stays human
Here's what AI can't do: make judgment calls based on context. Know when to push a client and when to back off. Sense that your team is burned out even when the metrics look fine. Build relationships that survive project failures.
Research found that middle managers account for over 22% of the variation in project revenue. That's not about spreadsheets. That's about human skills like motivation, translation, and reading the room.
The creatives who thrive won't be the ones who ignore AI. They'll be the ones who use AI for the grind and save their human energy for the work that actually requires a human.
The practical path forward
Spain now leads European AI adoption at 78%. The UK and Italy are at 68%. This isn't coming. It's here.
If you run a creative business, start asking uncomfortable questions. Which roles exist because you've always had them? Which meetings happen because someone needs to feel important? Which layers of approval slow you down without making the work better?
The European startups figuring this out aren't following a playbook. They're writing one. They're proving that small teams with clear purpose beat large teams with fuzzy hierarchies.
For creative professionals, this is the moment. The tools exist. The models exist. The only question is whether you'll use them to work smaller and smarter, or keep doing things the old way while your competitors don't.
The three-person studio isn't a compromise. It might be the future.
