We talked about adding and communicating value to our clients but now let’s talk about value for our staff.  McKinsey recently published a survey of middle managers and talked about how middle managers in particular are vital to organizations.

“Managers face pressures from above and below, they tend to be both underdeveloped and unempowered, and they face growing pressure to deliver in flatter, faster and leaner organizational structures, all of which leads to being underutilized and unappreciated.”

Middle managers in particular have to answer to both upper management and their teams and that creates a dilemma.  A manager with a strong team relationship can lead to better performance and operations.  But often middle managers get stuck on non-managerial tasks than things that will truly help the organization and on the talent that their teams possess.

So where does value come in?  There seems to be dilemma between what middle managers think is important and what they think their organizations value is.  Organizations need to be clear with what they want the middle managers to do with their time.  However, both middle managers and upper management agree that true value is in “strategy-focused work” of which one of the most important is overseeing initiatives which are so important to the organization’s future growth. The survey revealed that middle managers spend less than 25% of their time on strategy-focused work.

So, to me this is the old saying that “you need to spend time on your business instead of in your business”.  This is truly one of the hardest items for any business owner or upper level manager, we get continually caught in issues or problems and don’t spend enough time on the initiatives that are most important.

In addition, middle managers are in place to be people managers but that is often complicated by both the organization’s leadership and the employees who report to them.  Dealing with organizational bureaucracy is the top negative that has been identified.  The next two items that middle managers deal with are underperforming employees and senior leadership that negatively impacts their team.

One final thing that the McKinsey survey brings into light is that middle managers themselves want to not only be rewarded with more money (bonuses and raises) but also with more autonomy and increased responsibilities.

Read the entire McKinsey & Company Report here:  Middle management: A precious but wasted resource | McKinsey