The Changing Role of Middle Managers - Essay Example

The Changing Role of Middle Managers 1. The middle managers’ role identity crisis “Once again, I am working late; taking care of another disaster in my job….The management here is atrocious. The amazing thing to me is that valued, long time employees are leaving my company at a frightening rate and the owners don’t seem to notice or care. As a middle manager I have learned a considerable amount about how to (and how not to) treat one’s employees. Unfortunately there is a limit to how much I can insulate my team from the bull shit”. Quoted in Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, Basic Books, 2002: pp111-2 This quotation is a reflection of the anxiety and frustration of middle managers about their roles and responsibilities in the 21st century business organization. In the previous century the growth of the great business organizations around the world was attributed to the middle management role. Lisa Haneberg in her 2005 book titled “The High Impact Middle Management” described the middle manager as a “visionary, coach, team player and motivator, leading life on the front lines” (Haneberg, 2005). Professor Lynda Gratton of the London Business School, in an article titled “The End of the Middle Manager” in the January 2011 edition of the Harvard Business Review, however, says that new technology being applied to business management will cause “the classic job of the middle manager to disappear” (Gratton, 2011). Both these people are leading lights in the management education field and if they have such diversity in perception, it is no surprise that there is ambiguity in the understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the middle manager. This ambiguity is in the minds of the senior managements in companies, in the minds of the middle managers themselves and also in the minds of the line managers who report to the middle mangers. This paper discusses the changing role of middle management in large business organizations and the new identity and role definition that need to be created. 2. The traditional role of the middle manager The term Senior Management is usually applied to a small team including the CEO or Managing Director of a company and the immediate level below him who essentially set directions for the company. This team’s focus is more towards the long term goals of the company in terms of growth, profitability, withstanding competition, compliance with regulations, satisfying shareholders and increasingly being good corporate citizens in society in terms of the environment and sustainable business practices. Line managers tend to technical experts at specific tasks such as production, quality, purchasing, product development, marketing, sales, advertising or accounting. The middle manager serves as the interface between the small senior team and the much larger number of line managers (Jones and George, 2003). 2.1 The principal tasks for a middle manager Anthony Dance who describes himself as a Middle Manager Coach lists the differences between the middle managers’ role and that of the line managers who report to him. In a 2011 magazine article, he describes the middle manager as the manager of mangers whereas line mangers are mangers of specific functions. The middle manger’s performance is dependent on the performance of others and his set of duties is often not very clearly defined. Anthony Dance breaks up the traditional role of a middle manager into three principal categories, Strategic tasks, Technical tasks and People tasks. The Strategic tasks include the understanding of the objectives for the company set by the senior management and breaking those into actionable tasks for the line managers, providing feedback to senior management on any problems and recommending corrections, financial and performance analysis and reporting, and communication both upwards and downwards. The Technical tasks include administration, ensuring compliance with plans and co-ordination between line functions. The most important function, however, are the People tasks which include leading the team, motivating them and developing new leaders. Good middle managers strive to constantly improve the performance of line managers and remove those who fail to improve. The problem in most organizations comes from the middle manager not spending enough time on people tasks, either because he is overloaded with the other tasks or because he is uncomfortable with handling people issues (Dance, 2011). 2.2 The management skills needed at different levels of management The pyramid diagram shown below summarises the different skill levels required at various management levels in a modern business organization. (Image: Jones and George, 2003) The traditional roles for the Senior Management are for setting policies and procedures and for the middle mangers to ensure implementation of these by the front line supervisors. 3. The flattening of organizational structures In the last 20 years, large corporations have adopted a flattened organizational structure with reduced layers of management between the CEO and the line managers. Many large corporations such as GM and HP had as many of 35 layers between the CEO and the front line mangers. These have progressively been reduced to about 10 to 12. The reduced layers have largely been from the ranks of the middle managers. The benefits from delayering are clearly faster and better communications both up and down the hierarchy, quicker decision making, faster changes to changed business circumstances and reduced costs. The disadvantages are that the span of control for each member of the senior management team increases and in a geographically dispersed organization, the effectiveness of interaction suffers. In addition, a flatter organization reduces opportunities for career growth and leads to larger staff turnover (Griffin, 2013). Some studies of organizations that have flattened their structure show that far from making the organization more flexible and responsive, decision making has become more concentrated in the hands of a few people and the organization success or failure becomes overly dependent on the capabilities of those few people (Wulf, 2012). 4. The role of Information Technology in delayering of organizational structures The rapid advances in Information Technology applications in business have been one of the major factors that have permitted delayering of organizations. The largest single IT system investment that has impacted the organizational structure is the implementation of the ERP system which has made information flow in large organizations faster and more effective. These systems have eliminated one of the key roles middle managers have traditionally played as processors of information and reports. The advanced capabilities of these software systems in instantaneous processing of changing business conditions and the capability to interface with expert systems to suggest remedies to emerging problems have eliminated the need for the middle manager layer to visualize the solution and recommend its adoption (Prouty, 2012). Dr. Robert Houghton of the Western Carolina University has this interesting depiction of the digital palette which he suggests will define literacy in the 21st century (Houghton, 2010). Line managers in an organization will increasingly share, shape and solve problems using digital technologies of the kind shown in the diagram. There is also the futuristic vision of a virtual or informal organization where people will work together in the cyber world on specific problems without needing to be employed in the same company. 5. The UK industry requires much greater managerial skills at all levels A study by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills published in July 2012 has some very sobering findings on managerial skills in business organizations in the UK. The study finds that incompetence or bad management of company directors caused 56% of all corporate failures. 75% of the surveyed UK organizations reported a deficit of management and leadership skills leading to a productivity gap with US, Germany and Japan. 43% of middle managers rate their line managers as ineffective. The study estimates that UK businesses lose £ 19 billion a year in lost working hours due to ineffective management (BIS Report, 2012). One major reason for this deficit of management is inadequate training and mentoring of middle level managers. The report says that best- practice management development can have a 23% increase in organizational performance. A single point improvement in management practices on a five-point scale has the same increase in output as a 25% increase in labour force or a 65% increase in invested capital. The UK is expected to need 544,000 new managers by the end of the decade. 6. The “engaged” middle manager Many research findings show that an engaged work force is essential both to organizational success and personal well-being. The 2010 CIPD report says that only about 8% of the UK workforce is deeply engaged in its work while the majority 70% feel only moderately engaged. Over 21% do not feel any measure of engagement at all (CIPD, 2010). The CIPD study classifies employee engagement in three facets. Intellectual engagement where the employee thinks deeply about his work, affective engagement where he fells good about his job and social engagement where he actively seeks to discuss his job with others at the work place. In a survey of over 300 middle level managers in the UK and Ireland conducted in 2010, three out of five agreed that an engaged workforce improves company performance. Many had seen the level of engagement fall during the recession but less than 20% of the managers said they were doing anything about it (CMI, 2010). 7. The quotation at the start of this article To return to the quotation at the start of this article, the middle manager quoted by Richard Florida is clearly one who does not feel adequately engaged by his work. The causes may be several as we have seen in this article, the delayering process that reduces his role and responsibility, insufficient people skills that have not been corrected by training, the use of Information technology for many of the tasks that he has traditionally performed and so on. It could also be evidence of ineffective senior leadership of the company. The clear direction for senior management is to use the middle manager primarily for his People tasks listed by Anthony Dance which are leading, motivating and developing new leaders. This will increase the level of engagement of the workforce. For the middle manager to do this with a will, he needs to feel empowered and valued by the senior management by participation in key decision making processes in the company, being consulted on front line operational issues and generally feeling needed. He also needs to get formal training in areas where he has weaknesses. It is often forgotten that future senior leaders emerge from high performance middle managers. References: 1. 1BIS Report, (2012). “Leadership & Management in the UK – The Key to Sustainable Growth”, July 2012. (Accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.gov.uk/government/uploads/sytem/uploads /attachments_data/file/32327/19-923-leadership-mangement-key-to-sutainable-growth-evidence.pdf) 2. CIPD Report, (2010). “Creating an Engaged Workforce”, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2010. (Accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/ DD66E557-DB90-4F07-8198-87C3876F3371/O/creating-engaged-workforce.pdf) 3. CMI, (2010). “Do middle mangers get touchy feely enough?”, CMI, 5 Feb 2010 (Accessed on 8 Mar 2013 at www.managers.org.uk/forum/middle-managers/do-middle-mangers-get-touchy-feely-enough) 4. Dance, A., (2011). “The ambiguity of the Middle Management Role”, Manager Performance, 2011. (Accessed on 7 March 2011 at www.managerperformance.co.uk/downloads/the -ambiguity-of-the- middle-manager-role. PDF) 5. Gratton, L., (2011). “The End of the Middle Manager”, Harvard Business Review, January 2011. (Accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.hbr.org/2011/01/column-the-end-of-the-middle-manger/ar/1) 6. Griffin, D., (2013). “Benefits in a flat Organizational Structure”, Chron, 2013. (Accessed on 7 March 2013 at www.smallbusniness.chron.com/benefits-flat-organization-structure-281. html) 7. Jones G.R. and George J.M., (2003). “Mangers and Managing”, McGraw- Hill, 2003. (Presentation accessed at www.highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/ dl/free/0072865199/ …./chap004.ppt) 8. Haneberg, L., (2005). “High Impact Middle Management”, Adams Media, 2005. (Summary accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.getabstract.com/en/summary/leadership-and-mangement /high-impact-middle-management/ 4130/) 9. Hewitt, A., (2011). “Europe – The Missed Opportunity of Empowering Middle Managers”, Staffing Industry Analysts, 6 Oct 2011. (Accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.staffingindustry.com/ eng/Research-Publications/Daily-News/Europe-The-Missed-Opoortunity-of-Empowering-Middle-Managers) 10. Houghton, R., (2010). “Changing literacies: The 21st Century Digital Palette Set”, 2010. (Accessed on 8 March 2013 at www.wcu.edu/ceap/Houghton/ncmsj/e-monographs) 11. Prouty, (2012). “Lessons learned from deploying an ERP system”, CIO , 17 April 2012 (Accessed on 8 March 2012 at www.cio.co.uk/article/3351501/lessons-learned-from-deploying-an-erp-system/) 12. Wulf, J., (2012). “The Flattened Firm – Not as advertised”, Harvard Business School Working Paper 12-087, 9 April 2012 (Accessed at www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-087_bc50bde2-3016-457a-9bee-dc988cb1056b.pdf) Read More