Another CEO declares middle management dead. Flat organizations are hailed as a corporate utopia full of efficiencies and cost savings.
I understand why this dream appeals to people who have survived bad middle managers. But as someone who has been a middle manager, I can confidently say that middle managers are the heart of most organizations.
They operationalize the vision of leadership.
VPs and other C-suite executives come up with dazzling ideas. It is up to the middle managers to make them a reality. No VP that I know will sit with a team to make the small go/no-go decisions. Whether a variance is worth flagging or just noise, how to code a transaction that spans two entities, which reconciling items to escalate and which to resolve on the spot. These might seem like small decisions, but they are the decisions that can paralyze a team and stop progress.
I remember one occasion when I received a request from corporate. They wanted my team to document some processes. I had a team of four, and each one had a task or two to document. I sent the team the request from corporate and asked them to start working on it as soon as close was over. I sent two separate reminders, yet I grew concerned when no one reached out with questions. In my book, no questions mean no work.
A few days before the deadline, I set up an in-office 20-minute meeting to go over the progress and answer any questions. My boss pushed back. He said: why do you need a meeting? You sent clear instructions. This is a no-brainer. I said: just trust me.
At the meeting we found out that no one had even started working on the project. I was proven right.
One person didn’t even know there was a project to work on. He asked if he was cc’d on the emails. He was. The second one received the emails but didn’t think they applied to him. His thought: if I had to do something, someone would tell me in person. The third one knew about the project but somehow confused the deadline date with the date he was supposed to start. The fourth one understood the assignment but had not done anything about it… yet.
After the meeting my boss asked me to stay behind. His exact words were: what the f* was that? He couldn’t understand how this group of people had not understood the assignment.
I responded: that’s why you hired me.
Someone might respond to this story with: you just had a bad team. Hire better people. To that I say: I hired the best team I could afford.
Good talent is expensive, and most companies are not willing to write a blank check. But even if your company is willing to pay top dollar to hire self-directed talent, where do you think that talent came from? The best professionals I know had great middle managers showing them the ropes for years. Giving them feedback and helping them along the way.
Leaders are built, not born.
A friend of mine started at the bottom and retired from the C-suite. At 65, she still credits her first two bosses for the trajectory.
So you’re a deep-pocketed company that decided to outsource the development of its people to other companies and only hire the best and brightest. I ask you: how long before the best and brightest get tired of self-directing and going above and beyond without any room to grow?
Imagine you have a team member who takes it upon themselves to onboard new hires and resolve ambiguity for the group. This person is already doing the work of a middle manager. They’re just not being paid for it, titled for it, or given anywhere to go because of it. How long before they figure that out? The distance between an individual contributor and the C-suite is too wide to cross without steps in between. Unless you have a top-notch internal leadership program that can bridge that gap, your best people will leave to get the growth they can’t get at your company.
I met someone recently whose company had removed all middle managers. He proudly said that it had been a year without any measurable loss of productivity. And I believe him.
But what will your productivity be in three to five years?
I do believe that if you have a strong team, probably built by a strong middle manager, where everyone knows what they do and there is cohesion, you can remove that middle manager without much change. At first.
Things start to shift once the team changes. People leave. People get hired. The strategy changes. But someone has to handle the next new executive ask.
That’s when the team starts to suffer. That’s when the bottom line suffers. That’s when you feel the absence of the middle manager. Another CEO can declare them dead. But they’re the ones keeping the company alive.
Real Thoughts 