Your Strategy Is Only as Strong as Your Managers

After more than 30 years working in leadership and management development, I have noticed something. Organisations can spend months creating a brilliant strategy, launch it with an impressive presentation and perhaps even produce a new set of branded coffee mugs. Then they hand it to their middle managers and expect them to make it work. In my experience, strategy rarely succeeds because of the PowerPoint. It succeeds because managers have the confidence, capability and support to bring it to life.

The Evidence

More than 90% of employees report to a middle manager. That means the everyday experience of work is shaped less by the executive team and more by the manager employees interact with every day.

Middle managers turn strategy into action. They manage performance, develop people, support wellbeing and help teams navigate change. They connect leadership ambition with organisational reality.

Expected to Deliver, Without the Support

Yet many organisations are making it increasingly difficult for managers to succeed.

McKinsey found that managers spend less than 30% of their time on people leadership. Almost half their time is consumed by administration and individual-contributor work.

The pressure is having an impact. Future Forum’s global study of 10,766 workers found that 43% of middle managers were experiencing burnout, the highest proportion of any organisational level.

McKinsey also found that almost half of US managers, and 42% globally, disagreed or were unsure that their organisation had set them up to succeed as people managers.

It Is Time for The Shift

The Shift is practical management development built around the real challenges managers face. It develops the mindset, skillset and tools managers need to manage themselves, lead their people, improve performance and turn change into action.

This is not another generic management course. It is designed to create measurable shifts in behaviour and performance.

Leaders set direction. Managers create reality.

Is it time for The Shift in your organisation?

Contact me today matt@twentyoneleadership.com

Research sources: McKinsey & Company, Stop Wasting Your Most Precious Resource: Middle Managers, 2023; McKinsey, Power to the Middle, 2023; and Future Forum Pulse, 2022.