What if middle managers didn’t have to be direct reports themselves?

I’ll be straight up with ya: I am not a fan of middle managers, writ large. I’ve encountered 1-2 good ones in my days hitting the numbers in fish-reeking HQs (“Bring that for lunch ONE more time, Tom, and see what I do!”), but I’ve encountered roughly 946 bad ones. I have stories for days, many of which have been told on this blog over the years, including in posts about how middle managers cripple the bottom line, the potential death of middle management (which will never happen), how little middle managers seem to do in a given day, and — here’s one time I gave them some love — the inherent challenges of being a middle manager.

Let’s see if we can walk through this a little bit.

The basic truth

A lot of people become managers because, in many (all?) organizations, it’s the only way to make more money without going into sales and having a commission option. In such a context, “direct reports” = “more salary.” Very few are aspiring to these roles because they want to guide, shape, and develop employees and their careers; they are aspiring to these roles because they need more money for their family, their needs, their wants, etc. And it’s the only path.

At McKesson in summer 2013, where I was working, I pitched a plan to have a managerial track and an individual contributor track with equivalent salary options. I got laughed out of the room. So, yea.

The part we acknowledge less

OK, so now Marty Middle Manager chased a bunch of direct reports to position his salary and incentives in a better light. Cool. Good for Marty.

The problem is that Marty is also a direct report; he reports to ROI Ronnie and Executive Eddie (dashed line).

Now, do you think Marty is going to prioritize the people he manages, or the people he manages up to?

Right, right.

Some people are capable of both, no doubt. And some people will prioritize and protect their team over their executives.

Is this most people?

Right, right.

The other facet of “Middle managers remain as direct reports themselves” that needs to be addressed is the whole “sense of urgency” or “shiny object” deal. A lot of executives, for better or (often) worse, have a “last person I talked to/heard from” problem — in essence, one conversation on a Tuesday can change the course of the company for three months. That’s why it’s so funny that people were up in arms about Trump tweeting and shifting markets; Trump was just doing what his ilk have done for generations.

So if a middle manager is a direct report of someone higher up, and someone higher up is chasing pennies and nickels and shiny unicorns all the time, what do you think that middle manager is doing?

Helping to chase those shiny unicorns.

Plus: back-end work, reviews, paperwork, budgets, logistics, time sheets, etc.

Plus: probably a small degree of hiring.

Now let’s say that middle manager has three direct reports of their own, right? In a given 40-hour (OK, really 37) work week, where do their needs come in? The list usually goes like this:

• Please those above
• Do the paperwork
• Make the trains run
• Go to all your meetings
• Answer all your emails
• Be on all your calls
• Please those above

Notice what we haven’t said yet: “Manage the people under you and prioritize their work for them and help them with roadblocks.”

It barely makes the list for many middle managers. You wonder why Netflix is so popular? Just had its best month ever in December 2020? Well, lockdowns helped for sure. Beyond that, though? Middle managers spend all week kissing ass and updating forms and sitting in meetings, and they get to the end of the week and just want to slump on a $1600 couch (BAZINGA!) with a whiskey. That’s white-collar, mid-30s to mid-50s life for many. But if it works for you, more power to ya.

So could we fix this at all?

Probably not, because of how people conceptualize hierarchy and salary bands.

Ideally, though, we’d have:

• Execs/founders/leaders/silo heads
• A crew of managers who work for them and make the trains run for them
• {pause}
• Execution-level workers (low-level), customer-facing
• A crew of managers who work for them and mange them, and don’t need to manage up or do side projects for the top people
• {pause}
• If you’re good as a low-level worker, you can become either tier of manager
• If you’re good as a “manager of people,” you can shift to “a manager who placates executives”
• If you’re good as a “manager who placates executives,” you can be under consideration to become an executive

In this way, the time management and incentive structures become a little bit more rational.

Would it ever happen? No, probably not. But here’s dreaming!

Your take?