Where Have All the Middle Managers Gone?

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Hybrid work models tend to bring issues related to trust, accountability, productivity, and equity to the forefront. All of this adds even more pressure on middle managers to function as the glue to ensure execution of organizational goals. Yet, many companies continue to depend on extremely lean middle management layers. Expecting overworked staff to hold everything together without at least upskilling them to manage remote teams is a recipe for failure.

Why does it matter that people generally quit managers, not companies? 

Most knowledge workers are highly trained experts, practitioners, and professionals whose expertise tends to be expensive and time-consuming to replace. It is not nearly as easy and cheap to replace them as U.S. corporate practices would lead you to believe. Therefore, if these knowledge workers often (quiet) quit due to what they perceive to be difficult, unhealthy, or toxic relationships with those above them, it’s time to address those issues to prevent this repetitive cycle.

Where have all the middle managers gone? 

According to McKinsey, middle management has been under assault for the last 30 years, especially within US firms as they cut this tier during multiple rounds of cost-cutting (“The Vanishing Middle Manager”). Enter the pandemic during which upper managers tended to bypass any middle managers who were left to make fast decisions. The rise of artificial intelligence is now being used to justify maintaining these flatter organizations. And yet, we don’t see upper managers or chatbots able to take on the day-to-day work required to attract, develop, motivate, and maintain knowledge workers who are remote and geographically dispersed.

Are we reducing the middle management layer at our own peril? 

Workers are asking for better leaders, better apprenticeships, better coaching – loud and clear. Who is capable of upskilling frontline workers to make independent decisions and function productively on cross-functional teams, if not middle managers? The same goes for your next generation of localization leaders. What should be eliminated are bureaucratic workflows and tasks that don’t add value for middle managers, rather than the people themselves. Keep the role – and nurture it – to ensure that other staff don’t abandon you little by little.

In summary, managing localization teams going forward – whether remote, hybrid, or in-person – requires expanding beyond metrics based on hours worked, tests run, bugs resolved, and words delivered to what these efforts actually produce related to business goals. Is the team able to onboard and retain productive “remote natives?” How much time is being spent on administrative tasks that drive employees crazy? Does the localization leader know how to support the team without micromanaging? Are staff allowed to review their managers’ performance? The answers to these questions are essential to measuring middle management performance in a hybrid-first world.