Rising Above the Concrete Layer
Middle management jobs are often the toughest jobs in any organization. You are effectively the meat in the sandwich.
You get pressure from above, and resistance from below… and sometimes it’s hard to work out which side you want to be on.
This creates incredible dissonance, and it increases your stress levels, at times making your job downright miserable.
Middle management, in larger organizations, is often known as the concrete layer, because no value manages to get through it…
The good things that the senior leadership is trying to align the business towards, and the messages it wants to communicate, simply can’t make their way down through the concrete layer…
And the thoughts, concerns and ideas of the workforce can’t seem to make their way up through the concrete layer, either!
In many cases your boss won’t be that helpful in supporting you to break through the concrete layer, either:
- He may not provide you with air cover to protect you from machinations at the top of the company… he just says yes to everything, because he doesn’t want to disappoint his boss, and you get left to deliver a work program that far exceeds the capability and capacity of your team.
- He may not back your decisions, and allow you to be overruled further up the line, even if the decision was well within your accountabilities.
- He may not support you to set a higher standard for behavior. For example, preventing you from sacking a talented jerk, or long-standing employee who simply chooses to behave badly. Make no mistake, if you do the right thing as a middle manager, the senior leadership will have plenty of opportunity to show you whether or not they have a genuine appetite for performance improvement
- The boss may set unreasonable or irrational demands, including under-resourcing, or not taking into account local factors in their decision-making
- He may not provide clarity of objectives, which is often experienced when he sets too many competing priorities, flip-flops, or simply doesn’t give you adequate direction about what he wants you to do
It’s no wonder the concrete layer is such an observable phenomenon… it would be incredibly difficult for anyone to do the job of a middle manager under those circumstances.
So, what’s the best way for you to rise above the concrete layer?
The biggest problems seem to manifest when you try to have a foot in both camps… when you try to be all things to all people… trying to please your bosses, and at the same time, to please the people who work for you.
You have to pick a side!
And if you want to rise above the concrete layer, that side is with your boss. Don’t get me wrong, though:
- You still have to fight all the way up the line to achieve the best outcomes for your people;
- You have to care deeply for every individual in your team;
- And you have to push back on your boss when he asks you to do dumb shit.
But you do need to clearly identify with the CEO and executive team. A leader’s job, at any level, is to execute on management intent – to implement the strategy and direction of the company, to the best of their ability…
Your job is to deliver the most value possible with the resources that have been gifted to you by the business. That’s how you rise above the concrete layer, and remove the daily struggle of trying to decide which way to side on any issue.
So, do your job… be a leader, and get the most you possibly can out of your people – with strength and empathy!