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Strategic Thinker:
Paul Osterman
Credentials:
Osterman is NTU Professor of Human Resources and Management at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and has been a senior administrator of job training programs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. His research concerns changes in work organization within companies, career patterns and processes within firms, economic development, urban poverty and public policy surrounding skills training and employment programs.
Big Idea:
The true value of middle managers is greater than ever, but they are becoming increasingly cynical about and distant from their organizations.
Book:
The Truth About Middle Managers: Who they are, How they work, Why they matter, published by Harvard Business Press, February 2009.
Middle managers are no longer the highly celebrated "Organization Men" of the 1950s, now they feel like the forgotten men (and women) caught in a downward spiral of endless layoffs, frequent restructurings and career dead ends. And while endless books exist on the CEO and upper management, there are relatively few on the middle manager. Paul Osterman, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and the author of The Truth About Middle Managers, seeks to remedy the situation by turning the spotlight on these essential workers based on his analysis of over thirty years of employment data and extensive interviews with middle managers.
What is the definition of a middle manager today? For the purpose of his interviews, Osterman sought out people to interview who led a team or managed a set of team leaders, were salaried, had at least a college degree and were on a managerial track. Middle managers interpret and execute the decisions made by senior management; in other words, they don't set agendas, they carry them out.
How are today's mid-level managers faring? Corporate restructurings have led many experts and media pundits to see gloom and doom in store for middle managers. But Osterman finds that reality does not support that negative assessment, despite the fact that there are some clouds on the horizon.
For one, he finds that middle managers are not a dying breed. In fact, he finds their numbers have increased dramatically. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 6% of private-sector workers (between the ages of 20 and 64) classified themselves as salaried managers in 1983, rising to about 8.5% in 2002. Moreover, job tenure is still relatively stable. Among managers 45 to 64 years old, 29% have been with their employer for more than 15 years (U.S. Census Bureau 2006 data), but this is down from 39% back in 1987.
Other factors have changed too in the world of middle management. Career paths are no longer neat and tidy and upwardly moving. Formal management development programs, along with stable, long-term employment peaked about 25 years ago. As corporations restructured and re-engineered themselves, some mid-level manager positions were eliminated. Today you find most middle managers in charge of cross-functional teams, often responsible to multiple people. They act as "the transmission belt between the top of the organization and the bottom," says Osterman. They manage internal processes of the teams and act as a liaison to other teams. The job requires new communication and relationship skills, as middle managers walk the fine line of negotiating between different interests.
In this new organization structure, managers go from task to task, project to project, and are unable to put sustained attention into any one thing. Expectations are up, and so are the hours and stress levels. Some people believe that management work is evolving to provide middle managers with greater autonomy, breadth of experience and the ability to be intrapreneurs, shaping their own careers. While that may be the case for some managers, others may find their jobs narrowing and less satisfying.
And as organizations continuously reshape themselves to deal with the fast moving competitive landscape, the layers between middle and top managers have flattened. With traditional pathways disrupted, slow growth, and the loss of rungs on the corporate ladder, there are just fewer opportunities for advancement, says Osterman. Moreover, new leaders often bring in outsiders to help them restructure their organization and these executives have no ties to the middle managers that report to them.
It's also become harder for companies to judge mid-managers. Group work does not always yield an easily measurable product. And much of what managers do is "relatively invisible and hard to capture in clean measures," says Osterman. Supervisors also keep changing, so it's hard to build the kind of relationships that used to lend themselves to a clear sense of how one was doing. "The traditional rules for getting ahead are in doubt," adds Osterman. "Job paths are no longer clear, networks are disrupted, and the metrics for performance assessment and the criteria for judging who gets ahead are confused."
With predictable career paths vanishing, one manager interviewed by Osterman describes his career as "happenstance." Bouncing around the company taught this manager a lot, but it also makes it harder to understand how to make the next career move. Says Osterman, "If one's job is to move from one ad hoc project team to another, the strategy for upward mobility becomes unclear."
Next:
Layoffs Severely Straining Corporate Ties
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