Middle Managers Squeezed by Change: How to Cope

Many, if not most, management employees spend most of their careers in middle management. A typical career path in a manufacturing or service-oriented firm is to spend a few years managing hourly employees, and then to get promoted to managing other managers. Where you may stay for many years. Given the pyramid structure of most companies, few middle managers move into “upper management,” where they have division-level responsibilities.

Ethan Mollick of Wharton Business School has argued that middle managers have more impact on company performance than any other group in knowledge-based organizations.  Although their function may seem bureaucratic, middle managers allocate the resources that determine what work gets done in the organization.  They also set the tone of the workplace in terms of encouraging innovation and creativity.
While top management may decree what the company’s direction and strategy should be, these decisions do not get implemented without the support of middle managers. Many change management efforts in organizations fail because senior leadership fails to get the buy-in of middle managers.

Despite their critical role, middle managers often do not get much respect.  In July 2012, David K. Williams wrote in Forbes that middle managers are on their way out and will not be missed, because organizations need leaders, not managers.   In January 2011, Lynda Gratton wrote a column for the Harvard Business Review titled “End of the Middle Manager.”  

No wonder, then, that the Center for Creative Leadership reported in their October 2012 e-Newsletter  that middle managers are squeezed and suffer the most stress of any role in the organization. Middle managers suffer the worst work/life balance and feel the least job security.

In that same e-Newsletter issue, another CCL article stated that change is ongoing and relentless. Middle managers are the ones squeezed by the change. They are pushed from both above and below.

In her article in the Harvard Business Review, Gratton argued that for middle managers to survive in the information age, (1) they need to develop unique and valuable knowledge or competencies, and (2) they need to expand their knowledge into “adjacencies” so that their knowledge grew broader as their responsibilities increased. In other words, middle managers are in the middle of constant change and growth.

Despite the time pressures on middle managers, CCL says that it is critical for them to take time to reflect on the following questions:

• What could you accomplish at work?
• What goals can you set?
• How might your personal life be better?
• How could your relationships improve?
• How would you feel if these improvements occurred?

Although middle managers are squeezed, they are responsible for themselves. Some of my earlier posts on empowering yourself might offer more suggestions. Here are links to those posts:

Step One: Determine the Current Reality 
Step Two = Choose to Assert Your Own Powers
Step Three = Recognize and Use Office Politics Positively
Step Four = Recognize the Difficulty of Change

What do you do to take responsibility for empowering yourself at work?

Diversity and Development: Cohesion & Comfort v. Stuffing the Pipeline

My law school class more than thirty years ago was only about 20% women; today, most law schools have 50% or more female students. I recall attending a meeting of the Women Law Students Association, and realizing how nice it felt not to worry about gender issues, not to feel like I was “out of place.” I was probably less circumspect in my comments during that discussion than I would have been had I been in the minority as a female.

As a white professional and manager in a corporate setting, I was typically in the majority by race, but I recall two instances when I was the only white in the meeting.

One time was in a meeting to discuss a particular employee’s performance – all but one of the managers in this employee’s chain of command happened to be African American, and that white manager was not at the meeting. I was a white attorney outside the chain of command there to provide legal advice. On that occasion, I recall feeling that my company had “arrived” on the diversity front with this random occurrence of a mostly African American chain of command. But of course, it had taken many senior managers in that division many years of recruiting and development work before this happened.

The other occasion where I was the only white in a meeting was at a session during a Black MBA Convention where I was recruiting. On that occasion, I recall being very conscious of my race, and realizing that that is how most minorities feel most of the time.

Unlike my reticence in my male-dominated law school classes, I felt very free at that Black MBA meeting to voice my opinions.  I wondered, however, whether my outspokenness was due to (1) the maturity I had gained in the twenty or so years since law school, or (2) my “status” as a member of the majority race, whereas in law school I had been of the minority gender. I will probably never know the answer to that, but at least I was self-aware enough to recognize my behavior and to ask myself the question.

I wonder how many white males would have had that same awareness. When I told my husband this story, he had no idea what I was talking about. Although diversity sensitivity and self-reflection are not among his strengths.

The Wharton School of Business published an article on their Knowledge @ Wharton online newsletter on August 29, 2012, entitled “Race, Gender and Careers: Why 'Stuffing the Pipeline' Is Not Enough”. The article describes research by Wharton professor Katherine L. Milkman and Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, which found that placing professionals of one race or gender all in the same work unit led to lower retention of those professionals.

Although there was greater social cohesion in these work groups – like I had found with the Women Law Student Association – the members of the groups perceived they were competing against each other for limited opportunities for advancement. They perceived there were “quotas,”  whether there were or not. In addition, they perceived structural marginalization – the saw their work unit as a “ghetto.

The conclusion of this research:

"Attempts to design employment practices that are blind to the demographics of candidates are likely to succeed only if all candidates perceive and receive equal mentoring, sponsorship, and peer support regardless of their race and gender."

Milkman is quoted in the article as follows:

"Having mentors and role models who look like you is important. But, more interestingly, we see these negative effects associated with being in a work group with lots of competitors for promotion who resemble you demographically."

In other words, it may be helpful to have opportunities in cohesive groups for interaction, but the workplace with its competition and race for advancement needs to be open.

What has your experience been with race and gender in homogenous work groups?