Middle managers often get a bad rap, but research from Wharton shows this is unfair. The study highlights how important middle managers are for a company’s success.
The research suggests that middle managers may have more impact on a company’s performance than any other group. Their role is especially crucial in fields that need innovation, like biotech, computing, and media. These managers connect top-level plans with everyday work, helping create an environment where new ideas and productivity thrive.
Implementing strategy
Research from the University of East London highlights how this key strategic role may not always go according to plan, however. The study found that while middle managers often play a crucial role in implementing strategies, they often do so in ways that deviate from those intended by the senior managers.
The researchers remind us that around half of strategies fail to achieve the results leaders hope for, and that it’s common for middle managers to carry the can for those failures.
There are many reasons why middle managers don’t implement a strategy as planned. These include not understanding or agreeing with the strategy, not being monitored enough, lacking the right incentives, and not having enough resources. But to deviate from a strategy, middle managers also need the means to do so.
Failure to implement
In the study, researchers interviewed 40 middle managers in 30 multinational companies about 122 strategy implementations to find out how they implement strategies in unintended ways.
Despite extensive research on middle managers and their roles in strategy implementation, we still don’t fully understand the activities that lead to intended and unintended strategies. The study identified three key activities middle managers rely on: their long experience, their performance track record, and the trust of their bosses.
Interestingly, however, another set of activities was used that varied depending on whether the strategy would be implemented faithfully or not. For instance, the researchers found that when middle managers were deviating from the intended strategy, they were far more likely to use their personal judgment and autonomy. They did this because their power allowed them to act without requiring support from others, sometimes even including their bosses.
A collaborative approach
Alternatively, when middle managers were more inclined to implement the strategies as intended, they were much more likely to collaborate and cooperate with their colleagues.
This was not the case when middle managers wanted to deviate from the chosen strategy. In this instance, they would be far more likely to act independently both of those beneath them and those above them.
While deviating middle managers were less likely to collaborate with those around them, they were found to enlist the support of others in terms of allyship. The study found that 40% of unintended strategies involved middle managers forming internal alliances, which were less necessary when following the intended strategies. For unintended strategies, they also heavily relied on external alliances (66%), compared to only 13% when implementing strategies as intended.
Logical sequence
The findings suggest a logical sequence in how middle managers use four layers of activities. First, they draw on their characteristics (experience, past performance, and trust from superiors). Then, they use their autonomy (judgment, flexibility, and positional power). Next, they cooperate with immediate co-workers (teams and superiors). Finally, as a last resort, they form coalitions (seek powerful allies and create alliances).
Middle managers should be aware of the range of activities they can use to execute strategy. Senior executives should understand these methods to better engage with middle managers early in the implementation process if they notice inappropriate deviation.
Most middle managers are tasked with more strategic activities than they can manage with the available time and resources. As a result, they often increase their autonomy. This is especially true for strategies that are hard to implement. In such cases, senior executives should assist with implementing the intended strategy rather than allowing deviation.
