What is the use of middle management?
Discussion
Nerve touched!
Middle management are there to obstruct the intent of the higher management because either they don't agree with it or it is too much like hard work. At the same time they will put all of their efforts in to maintaining the illusion of performing well whilst simultaneously not doing anything to lead those below them, even to the extent that they will stifle initiative as it may look bad for them to have a subordinate exceed their own abilities.
Middle management are there to obstruct the intent of the higher management because either they don't agree with it or it is too much like hard work. At the same time they will put all of their efforts in to maintaining the illusion of performing well whilst simultaneously not doing anything to lead those below them, even to the extent that they will stifle initiative as it may look bad for them to have a subordinate exceed their own abilities.
Sheets Tabuer said:
Who else in the work place could send out gems like this to the entire work force?
This is a genuine email from the health and safety manager and I quote..
"someone went to lift a box yesterday in the warehouse and felt pain in their wrist, think could this happen to you?"
masturbation deficiency is becoming less common with the internetThis is a genuine email from the health and safety manager and I quote..
"someone went to lift a box yesterday in the warehouse and felt pain in their wrist, think could this happen to you?"
In many organisations not a lot but in an organisation with a well thought out organisational design with defined number of layers and sensible spans of control they can add fantastic value. The key is to design your organisation as flat as possible with minimum layers and sensible spans of control. It is also important to define accountability points in the structure and hold people to account for the decisions they are paid to make.
An awful lot of the impression that middle management are useless etc comes from the fact that lots of organisations are not like that. Organisational design is alien to many organisations and they have just grown organically over the years and someone has though that once you get to a certain number of staff that another manager is needed etc.
Too many layers create the following issues -
People have no idea what others actually do because what they do and what is on their job description are often different things
People avoid accountability and push decisions up the tree so most people end up working a layer or two down from where they really should be
There are no future consequences in multi layered and fractured organisations so if I make a decision and it has an impact on another function I don’t care etc
Layered Organisations tend to punish failure when in reality they need to punish the failure to cooperate
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it. This is what is missing on lots of organisations and therefore they grow without much control and you end up with managers in positions without much accountability and without clearly defined outcomes and that is when you end up with the middle manager problem.
If you want to remove it the first step is to draw out your organisational design as a hierarchy and plot the accountability points on it. Where someone has no accountability or two roles are squeezed accountability wise with the layers in essence being too close together then these are roles that can frozen out of the structure potentially and probably removed.
The key first of all though is to find out what people actually do rather than what their job description says
An awful lot of the impression that middle management are useless etc comes from the fact that lots of organisations are not like that. Organisational design is alien to many organisations and they have just grown organically over the years and someone has though that once you get to a certain number of staff that another manager is needed etc.
Too many layers create the following issues -
People have no idea what others actually do because what they do and what is on their job description are often different things
People avoid accountability and push decisions up the tree so most people end up working a layer or two down from where they really should be
There are no future consequences in multi layered and fractured organisations so if I make a decision and it has an impact on another function I don’t care etc
Layered Organisations tend to punish failure when in reality they need to punish the failure to cooperate
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it. This is what is missing on lots of organisations and therefore they grow without much control and you end up with managers in positions without much accountability and without clearly defined outcomes and that is when you end up with the middle manager problem.
If you want to remove it the first step is to draw out your organisational design as a hierarchy and plot the accountability points on it. Where someone has no accountability or two roles are squeezed accountability wise with the layers in essence being too close together then these are roles that can frozen out of the structure potentially and probably removed.
The key first of all though is to find out what people actually do rather than what their job description says
stevesingo said:
Middle management are there to obstruct the intent of the higher management because either they don't agree with it or it is too much like hard work.
Damping out f
king stupid and kneejerk decisions is actually quite a useful function, to be fair.It's like in Red Dwarf:
"Red alert!"
"Are you sure, sir? It will mean changing the bulb..."
craigjm said:
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it.
This, in a nutshell...An ex work colleague/good mate's uncle was a business turnaround specialist. He was a wealthy man on the back on the back of his efforts. I met the chap once, and he passed on some snippets - my favourite being….
“All it takes is one meeting with the board, and the problems are obvious…”
bucksmanuk said:
craigjm said:
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it.
This, in a nutshell...An ex work colleague/good mate's uncle was a business turnaround specialist. He was a wealthy man on the back on the back of his efforts. I met the chap once, and he passed on some snippets - my favourite being….
“All it takes is one meeting with the board, and the problems are obvious…”
Jasey_ said:
This is a cultural issue which is the next step after organisational design changes to make sure these problems don’t happen. Management layers are not there to protect the leadership from the workers and it’s not a them and us game. Organisations that think like that fail.
To be a success power to act and accountability need to be in the places where they are required and that’s not necessarily at the highest point.
The problem is that too many companies are still organised along the lines of 19th century business that assumes the workers are lazy and need to be driven to do what they are paid to do.
The best organisations to work in have defined organisational designs with accountability points, focused operating models and a culture of partnership between everyone that works there regardless of position.
For blame.
Workers blame middle management for their woes which have been determined by senior management.
Senior Management blame middle management for their failures to implement all the wonderful ideas etc.
Everyone is happy as usually middle management are those not quite competent enough to succeed therefore they obtain a position and salary greater than they really ought to and for this they are the target of blame....
Workers blame middle management for their woes which have been determined by senior management.
Senior Management blame middle management for their failures to implement all the wonderful ideas etc.
Everyone is happy as usually middle management are those not quite competent enough to succeed therefore they obtain a position and salary greater than they really ought to and for this they are the target of blame....
I suppose it depends on the type or workplace and environment.
Sometimes there are too many layers between higher management and the actual people doing the work. That's when you know there are useless people in there making decisions based on nothing.
I guess I come under the remit of middle management. We have a head of IT, me as the manager and then the two support teams. I run the department day to day whilst the head of IT effectively works on business strategy type stuff. I am far more in the mix of what goes on day to day so it makes sense.
Sometimes there are too many layers between higher management and the actual people doing the work. That's when you know there are useless people in there making decisions based on nothing.
I guess I come under the remit of middle management. We have a head of IT, me as the manager and then the two support teams. I run the department day to day whilst the head of IT effectively works on business strategy type stuff. I am far more in the mix of what goes on day to day so it makes sense.
Nerdherder said:
Recent observations combined with many prior experiences have leadme to raise an interesting topic for your meditation sessions:
What is the use of middle management?
Enlighten me.
To ensure that the organisation is running smoothly on a daily/weekly basis.What is the use of middle management?
Enlighten me.
Unless you work for a small organisation it won't be possible for the CEO to be hands-on. He will need other people to help him "manage". Anybody beneath the CEO is technically "middle management".
I used to be senior management in a small company, we were bought out by a massive corporation and I have been plonked firmly into middle management.
Honestly I don't know what the point of my role is any more. They bought people in to one side and took some of my responsibility, the director then put another layer of management in above me and took more of my responsibility. Emails and meetings mostly, meetings that mostly could have been emails.
My old boss said to me that middle management is like wiggling your hand in a bucket of water, you make a lot of splashing while you are there but take your hand away and its very quickly like it was never there. None of us can make a decision because none of us our empowered to make one.
We are just insulation layer for the directors. Makes us do the dirty work they don't want to, when it all goes tits up we are cannon fodder to fire.
You could get rid of a tonne of people,me included and the company would carry on the same, with a much lower salary.
A lot of cutting edge tech firms, especially silicon valley type start ups have an almost completely flat structure these days, never worked for one but sounds interesting.
Honestly I don't know what the point of my role is any more. They bought people in to one side and took some of my responsibility, the director then put another layer of management in above me and took more of my responsibility. Emails and meetings mostly, meetings that mostly could have been emails.
My old boss said to me that middle management is like wiggling your hand in a bucket of water, you make a lot of splashing while you are there but take your hand away and its very quickly like it was never there. None of us can make a decision because none of us our empowered to make one.
We are just insulation layer for the directors. Makes us do the dirty work they don't want to, when it all goes tits up we are cannon fodder to fire.
You could get rid of a tonne of people,me included and the company would carry on the same, with a much lower salary.
A lot of cutting edge tech firms, especially silicon valley type start ups have an almost completely flat structure these days, never worked for one but sounds interesting.
craigjm said:
In many organisations not a lot but in an organisation with a well thought out organisational design with defined number of layers and sensible spans of control they can add fantastic value. The key is to design your organisation as flat as possible with minimum layers and sensible spans of control. It is also important to define accountability points in the structure and hold people to account for the decisions they are paid to make.
An awful lot of the impression that middle management are useless etc comes from the fact that lots of organisations are not like that. Organisational design is alien to many organisations and they have just grown organically over the years and someone has though that once you get to a certain number of staff that another manager is needed etc.
Too many layers create the following issues -
People have no idea what others actually do because what they do and what is on their job description are often different things
People avoid accountability and push decisions up the tree so most people end up working a layer or two down from where they really should be
There are no future consequences in multi layered and fractured organisations so if I make a decision and it has an impact on another function I don’t care etc
Layered Organisations tend to punish failure when in reality they need to punish the failure to cooperate
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it. This is what is missing on lots of organisations and therefore they grow without much control and you end up with managers in positions without much accountability and without clearly defined outcomes and that is when you end up with the middle manager problem.
If you want to remove it the first step is to draw out your organisational design as a hierarchy and plot the accountability points on it. Where someone has no accountability or two roles are squeezed accountability wise with the layers in essence being too close together then these are roles that can frozen out of the structure potentially and probably removed.
The key first of all though is to find out what people actually do rather than what their job description says
Wait a minute... is this overly long post filled with wAn awful lot of the impression that middle management are useless etc comes from the fact that lots of organisations are not like that. Organisational design is alien to many organisations and they have just grown organically over the years and someone has though that once you get to a certain number of staff that another manager is needed etc.
Too many layers create the following issues -
People have no idea what others actually do because what they do and what is on their job description are often different things
People avoid accountability and push decisions up the tree so most people end up working a layer or two down from where they really should be
There are no future consequences in multi layered and fractured organisations so if I make a decision and it has an impact on another function I don’t care etc
Layered Organisations tend to punish failure when in reality they need to punish the failure to cooperate
Good organisational design is not difficult but it takes discipline and it requires strong leadership to actually enforce it. This is what is missing on lots of organisations and therefore they grow without much control and you end up with managers in positions without much accountability and without clearly defined outcomes and that is when you end up with the middle manager problem.
If you want to remove it the first step is to draw out your organisational design as a hierarchy and plot the accountability points on it. Where someone has no accountability or two roles are squeezed accountability wise with the layers in essence being too close together then these are roles that can frozen out of the structure potentially and probably removed.
The key first of all though is to find out what people actually do rather than what their job description says
ky business terms not supposed to be satirical?Oh, oh they’re here... amongst us. Run
I've swum in the shark-infested waters of middle management in a large corporate, in my case it was accountability without responsibility.
If your section does well your VP takes the credit, if they do badly you're out (of often as not, just not promoted/paid any more). This makes for a poisonous atmosphere between the managers, as they all look to offload their failures on one another and compete to be the boss' favourite (or at least the one that doesn't get their attention for the wrong reasons.
It's not a healthy place to work and a lot of people I've known have had stress related problems because of it.
As craigjm says further up, this kind of structure is all too common in many organizations but it doesn't have to be.
By changing jobs I've thankfully escaped both middle management and the corporate I was working for and found an alternative where people have to act in a co-operative way and take responsibilty for those below and above them in the hierarchy (successes and failures are shared throughout the organization).
If your section does well your VP takes the credit, if they do badly you're out (of often as not, just not promoted/paid any more). This makes for a poisonous atmosphere between the managers, as they all look to offload their failures on one another and compete to be the boss' favourite (or at least the one that doesn't get their attention for the wrong reasons.
It's not a healthy place to work and a lot of people I've known have had stress related problems because of it.
As craigjm says further up, this kind of structure is all too common in many organizations but it doesn't have to be.
By changing jobs I've thankfully escaped both middle management and the corporate I was working for and found an alternative where people have to act in a co-operative way and take responsibilty for those below and above them in the hierarchy (successes and failures are shared throughout the organization).
InitialDave said:
stevesingo said:
Middle management are there to obstruct the intent of the higher management because either they don't agree with it or it is too much like hard work.
Damping out fking stupid and kneejerk decisions is actually quite a useful function, to be fair.I've been the "middle manager" below a pretty terrible "senior manager" but who nevertheless maintained a good relationship with the directors etc.
but I was forever stopping his complete kneejerk bullsh*t and reactionary nonsense. He held grudges against staff that he didn't like, but then failed to account for the fact that he really should know their name properly when he wants people suspended/disciplined etc, which was his "thing". The problem of course was that other lower middle management types were too f*cking thick to realise that you had to actually look at the evidence in front of you, not listen to the idiot above you.
More than once I had to be the person to un-suspend someone who had been incorrectly targeted because they had a similar name to someone else who had actually caused whatever problem they were dealing with.
I'm glad not to be working for that person any longer.
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