Listen To What The Man Said
It is undeniably true that work is changing, fast and dramatically. We are just at the start, obsessing with the issue of location, which is actually quite a trivial change to what’s coming.
A lot of managers are struggling to adapt and might appear to be dragging their feet but maybe that’s not their fault and not what they are really doing.
However, not all managers are the same and I think we can separate out the senior managers from the rest because their response is different and not one that gets much sympathy from me.
These guys operate above a certain line in the organisations and I would draw it at that level where they no longer have regular contact with the people at the workface, the ones doing the work, dealing with the customers and suppliers, the operations of the business; and also can broadly decide how the things under their control work and set policy. So these are probably Divisional Heads, Functional Heads, members of the Senior Leadership Team and the C-suite (which might be the same thing). We can loosely refer to them as ‘the Bosses’.
The BBC published an article headed ‘Bosses secretly want staff back in office, says CBI's Tony Danker’ to which my response was “Secretly?”. Research has shown a massive divergence between what ‘Bosses’ and employees want and we all know what the gig is here.
The way things were in past worked for them and they want to go back to it. They want to see offices full of people and activity because it makes them feel important and it suits the way they work, which is mostly meeting people. I’ve blogged before that I can only conclude the main drivers for them are power, status and ego.
For these managers, it’s not so much that they are struggling to cope with the change, they are actively resisting it. They are looking for every opportunity to wind back policies they had to put in place due to COVID and tight labour market and return to the past.
Denial is never a good strategy. It’s not going to end well for these guys.
Man In The Middle
Most managers sit in the middle of the organisation, involved in delivering the day-to-day operations and managing teams of people who work together on a daily basis (as opposed to having lots of ‘direct reports’ who have distinct roles). They might be very junior, having just got a couple of people to manage or a small project team to run, or they could have a couple of teams or run several projects at once.
I often refer to these managers as ‘the squeezed middle’. They have the pressure from above to hit targets, implement strategy, manage process and report back on activity. They also have pressure from below to provide direction, clarity and resources so people can do their job and also deal with their ‘pay and rations’ and other needs. Oh, and they have to get their own work done.
They are the connective tissue between the senior managers and the workface, the translator between the grand strategy and the reality on the ground, the communicator between the top and the bottom. It’s aways been a tough job and it’s been getting tougher.
And now everything has changed and some of them aren’t coping well. They are trying to increase surveillance because they can’t see people anymore. They are resorting to micro-management because they feel the can’t control people. They are bombarding people with meetings and messaging and reporting and mandates because they need to feel they are still relevant.
It’s easy to see these behaviours as obstructive, and in some cases it certainly is, but most are just trying to figure out what they should be doing in this changed environment. Like we all do when under pressure, they are resorting to learned behaviours, to tactics that worked in the past in a different environment. It’s not going to work and it’s bloody annoying to be subjected to it but it is understandable. It’s a natural, human response.
And who did they learn these behaviours from? Yes, ‘the Bosses’, the ones that really ARE being obstructive.
So I think we have to start by remembering they are just humans, like us, flawed and brilliant at the same time. They are also scared, as the new way of working poses an existential threat to many of them. The wave of sacking in tech has been used by some (give me a G and an O, and another O …) to get rid of lots of middle management posts, something they have probably been planning for some time.
The ‘squeezed middle’ is facing a fresh squeeze, one they probably weren’t expecting. After all, if you’ve been with a major corp for several years and progressed up the hierarchy just like they asked you to and helped the company grow, you rather expect they are going to want to keep you. Which they do - until suddenly they don’t. One minute you are a valuable team member, the next, you’re an expensive overhead.
Boss Of Me
These managers have been put in a very unfair position, they are being expected to put themselves through a change that they haven’t been prepared for.
The role has changed in all sorts of ways and it’s not just that you no longer manage people in an office 5 days week and now they are spread all over the place.
It has changed from :
Task-orientation to People-orientation
Supervision and Control to Coaching and Nurturing
Telling to Listening
Deciding to Co-creating
Predicting to Emergence
Push to Pull
It’s not really surprising they are finding it hard to adapt. It’s like someone who’s trained to play football all their life suddenly finding they now have to play hockey.
It’s not a good fit for the skills they have and have been promoted for.
It’s doesn’t match the experience they have been through.
It makes new and unexpected demands of them.
They don’t have any role models.
They aren’t getting the training and support they need.
On top of that, like all of us, they don’t like change, especially when they are forced into it.
I don’t underestimate the task ahead of these managers. They need to develop a whole different way of being and working with people to what they have learnt, observed and understood as ‘normal’ in the past. Some will find it easy, able to unleash natural talents they have had to suppress in the past. However, many will find it really hard and some may decide they don’t want to try.
I am sympathetic to those that decide this is just too hard, that it’s beyond them, if it’s a conscious choice on their part. As long as they don’t obstruct and stop others from moving forward. And the accept the consequences of taking that position.
Within You Without You
Some managers are receiving training in the new skills that they need to manage distributed teams, to use the new digital tools and to work asynchronously. They may also be receiving training on how to coach people and to address their mental health and emotional needs.
These are essential skills to develop but for many this is going to be a profound change as they need to unlearn much of what they know and create a new version of themselves in this newly defined role.
They have to change how they feel about themselves and how they behave at work, they have to see themselves quite differently to how they have in past. You could even say they have to transform themselves.
Change is an inside-out process and this change has to start within them. They have to decide they want to make themselves into a new version of themselves, and then do the work.
And if you’re going to change to be something else, why not be a Pirate?
I’m not being flippant, tapping into the Pirate mindset and using the Pirate approach is a great way to learn what you need to thrive in the uncertain and volatile world of work that’s unfolding before us. Beside, everyone secretly wants to be a Pirate…
I’m going to be running a Sort-of Seminar soon on how to Decrapify Work by releasing your inner Pirate and accessing your power and agency. More news to come in the next couple of weeks.
Unfinished Sympathy
In summary, managers as we have known them in recent years are an endangered species. Under attack from above, where they are seen as unnecessary overhead and ‘bloat’, and needing to change so they can serve those below them and can thrive in the emerging world of distributed work (or liberated work, as John Preece aptly calls it).
We must hold them to account and insist they change but do so with some compassion and understanding. It’s going to take them a while and that’s frustrating but understandable. They’ll get there sooner if we help them.
Middle managers are the unloved, unlauded core of an organisation. They convert the often contradictory whim-, er, strategies of executives into actions their teams can undertake while simultaneously managing the anxieties and stresses of those teams. There are plenty of rubbish ones out there but lets give them some love.