Director/Manager Briefing
The Problems of Middle Managers

“It is the middle and upper-middle managers of contemporary organizations who hold the key to high performance, since they represent the greatest underutilization of human resources. Because of the winnowing of the selection process, managers at this level are typically knowledgeable and competent. They carry great responsibility; having moved past most of the routine and mundane tasks, they translate the lofty long-range plans of top management into successful operation. If they can produce, they have an important impact on much of the organization. Since they often manage managers or skilled professionals, their leadership has a cascading effect on several levels of important subordinates.”

Bradford and Cohen from Managing for Excellence

Middle and upper-middle managers all too often feel both constrained and pressured.
They field demands from customers, requests from the top and from staff specialists, while dealing with ambitious, demanding subordinates from below. Often independent authority to act is decreased. These and other forces converge to limit the effectiveness of these managers, leaving them frustrated and dissatisfied.

In our work as consultants to managers in both large and small organizations we have seen or heard about variations of the items listed below. Check to see if any apply to you.

• Your unit does adequate to above average work but you rarely get the kind of satisfaction from achieving excellence or delivering what you envisioned as possible.
• You find that despite hard work nothing comes easy and you have to supply the energy rather than your subordinates energizing you.
• While your subordinates are competent they seldom work near their potential in your estimation.
• If you really want something done right you have to do it yourself.
• You find that your subordinates don’t initiate enough, don’t take on tasks before having to be asked, and don’t anticipate problems, they just react to them. When your people do take the initiative they focus on things that are of special interest to them, rather than what might be good for the department/unit.
• Your people resist your directions and requests regarding integrating their efforts with the work of others.
• Your people do not seem to have the same commitment to the overall unit that you have. They do not see the larger, total department perspective thus focus on their narrow domains.
• The lesser commitment of subordinates is manifested in work that lacks quality or promptness. The sense of urgency you have is often missing in your subordinates, thus you find yourself prodding them to be sure deadlines are met.
• Meetings are too often a waste of time. You assess that your people often do not bring up key issues. When issues are addressed they spend time defending themselves rather than striving for a quality solution. You have a group of individuals, not a team.
• You often have the sense that you are the last to know important information. You find that your people, although aware of serious problems, wait for you to discover them. Also, they refuse to hold each other accountable for various deliverables, waiting for you to do that to pressure them.
• You may hear from your people that they want more exciting and challenging work, but since the regular work isn’t being done to high standards you are reluctant to add work.
• When you assess your people, or provide other feedback on performance, you are often confronted with defensiveness, denial and finger pointing. Essentially, they resist learning how they might improve their delivery and/or work with others better.

The above are common complaints of managers who work in companies that have grown but have not addressed their corporate life-cycle stage and/or their management styles. After you have finished this paper you might want to check the COO/VP Briefing: What is an Excellent Department? and the Director/Manager Briefing: The Three Kinds of Managers.

The checklist has been taken and adapted from Managing for Excellence by Bradford and Cohen (1997)

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