Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work

So keep listening to hear more about how and why managers are often exhausted and disillusioned, the five historical developments that have left them that way, and what they and the C-suite can do to change all that.

The book is divided into two parts. The first describes where middle management is now, and how it got there historically. It also focuses on the problems middle managers face when their role is misunderstood and misapplied. The second part covers where middle management should be, in the authors' view, and how to get there. It's significantly longer, and a good deal more uplifting.

Who are these middle managers anyway? The authors define middle managers as the people who are at least once removed from the front line, and at least a layer below the senior leadership. As such, they usually need to face in two directions. They need to be decision makers and problem solvers on behalf of their team, while also meeting the requirements of their own bosses.

So middle managers are often pulled in two directions, and this can leave them exhausted and disillusioned. People aren't generally good at the constant shifts in focus demanded of middle managers. They're particularly bad at them if they don't feel supported by their own bosses.

Senior managers often don't grasp the detail required to implement a strategy at a lower level. They're impatient for results, but don't provide the support necessary to make those results happen. So middle managers spend too much time on activities that don't provide value. They might want to support, coach and develop their teams, but they end up swamped in bureaucracy demanded of them from above.

But in a modern workplace, support, coaching and development skills are in high demand, as ways of working and workplace technology change at speed. So organizations are often squandering their most important resource.

So how did it come to this? The book provides a historical overview of the development of middle management which explains what went wrong.

Over the last two or three decades there have been major economic and technological changes in the workplace. These have led to five developments that have weakened middle managers.

First is the rise of bureaucracy. The development of communication technology meant that both senior and middle managers often had more time available than before. Worrying that this might make them seem expendable, they created reporting and box-ticking tasks. This administrative overwhelm meant that managers spent all their time achieving trivial goals. Middle managers also discovered that a proliferation of data didn't always lead to greater clarity or understanding.

Second was the appearance of the "superstar phenomenon." Organizations concentrated on recruiting high achievers, with spectacular résumés in sales, tech development or strategic thinking. These people bypassed middle managers, often gaining direct access to the C-suite. They made the middle-management function look even more humdrum than it was. Middle managers began to appear more expendable, and many were let go after the 2008 financial crisis. This further weakened the perception of the role.

Also, many of these superstars turned out to have a ton of knowledge and insight, but poor people-management skills, leading to dysfunctional teams.

Third was a steadfast resistance to change by managers. This is what the authors call "managerial permafrost." It happens in organizations where market pressure is low, and innovation less valued. These organizations tend to emphasize process, with a culture dominated by meetings and memos. This sticks, as managers either like the status quo, or are cynical about the value of changing it.

Fourth is the chaos that can result from high-speed growth. This often affects companies that like to think of themselves as agile and flat-structured. Tech startups sometimes make it part of their mission to dispense with the middle-management layer. But as they grow, they can discover a disconnect between the engineers at the front end and senior management. And execution becomes impossible without a middle layer to bring cohesion and direction.

The fifth and most recent blow to middle managers has been the rise of remote working. This was already a growing phenomenon by 2020, but the pandemic accelerated it dramatically. Managers outside the workplace became disconnected from their teams. Some of them liked it that way. They enjoyed the feeling of freedom from having to lead in person. It allowed them to think more clearly. But mostly, the frontline workforce didn't like it. They noticed the lack of purpose and direction. People who felt disconnected also felt undervalued.

Managers who did take responsibility for their teams found remote working more tiring and stressful than being present in person. One survey found that 43 percent of middle managers felt burned out, the highest of any job level.

The picture isn't a rosy one. So how can things change? That's what the rest of the book is about.

The authors' solution rests on a daring proposition: that in the current and future workplace, human capital is more important than financial capital. It also makes a big pitch to the C-suite: back and empower your middle managers, or face the prospect of serious decline.

Partly, this view is based on observations of generational change. Younger entrants to the job market want different things than their predecessors. The promise of work with purpose and meaning means more to many of them than absolute job security and a big salary. This means that in the growing battle for talent, organizations whose managers can show they're engaged, supportive, and keen to develop their people will have a big advantage.

Organizations have changed too. The rigid hierarchies of yesteryear have given way to flatter models, where promotion is more likely to be about developing new skills and responsibilities than getting a fancier job title and more direct reports.

All this means that middle managers should be ideally placed to translate strategic policy into frontline achievement. But that'll only happen if they have the support of senior management.

Senior leaders can't spend their time communicating directly with the front line. So they need middle managers to provide coaching and mentoring so that strategic plans are carried through into day-to-day action.

Middle managers hold a pivotal position. They're between the C-suite and the workers. More often than not, this has been a grinding chore, as you've heard. Continually twisting between deference and command is exhausting. But consider what such a position could offer.

These managers could act as coaches, navigators and explainers of an increasingly complex business world. They would have to handle remote and hybrid work, contractors, and ever-changing external demands. But they'd be at the very heart of the action, and instrumental to it.

Leaders can help by showing that middle-management roles are desirable and highly effective. That would mean placing their best-qualified people into these positions and providing the support they need to excel. It would also mean promoting and rewarding their best managers without shifting them into more senior roles for which they don't have the necessary skills.

One of the greatest challenges facing many businesses is how automation and artificial intelligence are gradually taking over the tasks formerly done by people. These people are in danger of losing their jobs or being redeployed to unsuitable ones.

Middle managers are well placed to work out what technology can do best, and what human beings still need to do. They usually know what their team members can do better than senior executives do. This means they can map out the future interface between people and technology.

The authors also talk about what they call "rebundling." This means redesigning jobs in new ways, so they remain necessary, relevant and rewarding, while shifting repetitive, unrewarding work to the machines. Again, middle managers are ideally placed to work through this rebundling effort.

Senior leaders have their own rebundling to do, restructuring and redesigning the jobs of their managers so that the managers have the time and space to rework what their teams do. Taking away trivial administration work gives managers the time and space to think, and imagine how things could be done better.

You've already heard that many workers are seeking more purpose and meaning in their roles. They include the best new graduates, so the battle for talent is getting tougher. Simply offering more money or perks doesn't always cut it.

But what about offering a strong sense of purpose, belonging and identity? That could swing the recruitment battle in your favor. And middle managers could deliver it. They can design and implement flexible-working arrangements, aiding both recruitment and retention. There's also evidence that these arrangements increase diversity, and deliver better-quality work.

Executives need to resist the urge to exert standardized control from the top. If they choose middle managers with the right skills, train them properly, and give them time to focus, they can trust them to build strong recruiting and retention strategies.

When it comes to performance evaluation, most organizations still go by the calendar. Evaluations tend to be monthly, quarterly or annual – and never mind the meaning of the work, or how each employee connects with it. This can actively stop employees from improving.

But a middle manager who designs and measures goals is better able to give continuous coaching, helping employees engage with their work and perform to a high level. Managers can link an employee's individual purpose to the company's purpose and goals. This is vital. It improves productivity and engagement, and reduces staff turnover.

Ongoing conversations naturally make the link to purpose and the bigger picture. An annual review, by contrast, focuses more on what the employee did, with little time to go over why they did it, or why it was important.

Senior leaders should make a clear statement of purpose that resonates with their managers, and then leave it to them to fit it to their team members. Leaders also need to make sure their managers have the time and training to offer regular coaching.

As part of the wider talent-management picture, managers should be enabled to take more responsibility for the hiring and career development of employees in their department. HR can help with the overall strategy, but they're unlikely to have the granular level of knowledge that middle managers have.

Middle managers are also important when it comes to handling and using data. They should decide which factors to measure, and use data so that they, senior management and team workers can all make the best-possible decisions. For example, a manager trained in website data analysis can contribute to important decisions on product development, marketing, and customer retention. They're often the ones best placed to act on those decisions, too.

But perhaps the area where middle managers can make the biggest difference to an organization is in inspiring their people. Only middle managers can make the day-to-day connection between an overarching corporate purpose and the purpose of each team member. And only they can create work options that serve both the organization and its individual employees.

If they can do that, they can maintain great relationships with both their reports and their own bosses, without having to tie themselves in knots to do it.

So what do we make of "Power to the Middle?" For a start, it's a powerfully argued critique of the state in which many organizations currently find themselves. Middle-management layers are often dysfunctional, and the individual members of those layers are often exhausted and demotivated.

The examples the authors choose illustrate their points very well and describe experiences their readers will recognize all too often.

There's nothing here that can be fixed with cosmetic tweaks. This is a revolutionary program. Despite its focus on middle management, the book's call to action is aimed squarely at the C-suite. Without their buy-in and will, the authors' recommendations won't go very far.

Perhaps the toughest ask is that senior managers give up their control of many processes, and allow middle managers to show what they can do. That calls for trust. You need to be sure you have the right people in place to make it work.

Even with those qualifications, this is a valuable book. The emphasis is firmly on change that enables better working conditions for both managers and their team members. That has to be worth pursuing – as are the promised benefits of greater employee engagement and retention – and the bottom-line boost they bring.

"Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work," by Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock and Emily Field, is published by Harvard Business Review Press.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening