Save the managers

Today’s middle manager is positioned to fail. Our organizations keeping asking them to produce more results while equipping them with less resources. They have to be a project manager, manage their budget, coach their employees, connect with their peers, tap into the direction of their manager, manage employee performance, accomplish their personal action items, and on and on. 

It’s time to reconstruct the manager position so that the folks in those roles have a fighting chance.

First, it’s helpful to define what a manager’s responsibilities need to be in your organization. There are two main modes that managers function in for organizations: managing the work and managing the people. In plenty of organizations, managers do both sides. 

Work managers are responsible for:

• Ensuring appropriate level of technical expertise available for each project

• Managing the flow of for an ensuring appropriate capacity is available

• Managing projects and timelines

• Managing cross-functional work teams

People managers are responsible for:

• Developing people through coaching and skill-building

• Performance management

• Career coaching and long-term development planning

• Talent review and succession planning

When we ask one person to function as a manager doing both sets of responsibilities, we are asking for alot. Additionally, we will often find that a manager would be a phenomenal contributor to our organization if they did one of these roles as opposed to turning them into a mediocre performer by asking them to do both.

I realize the size of many organizations necessitates the combo manager role, but if your organization has the ability to redesign these manager roles, we would see many more successful managers.