Is middle management really dead weight, or are we cutting off the wrong limb? In this episode, Amy and Jason take on the hype around “The Great Flattening” and call out the risks of gutting the layer that keeps organizations running smoothly. Sure, middle managers have their flaws—what role doesn’t? But eliminating them entirely isn’t the brilliant shortcut some leaders think it is.
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Middle Managers
- What Do Managers Of Managers Do? | Radical Candor Podcast S4, Ep.16
- Who Wants To Be A Manager? | Radical Candor Podcast S6, Ep.14
- Should I Be A Manager? | Radical Candor Podcast S5, Ep.25
- Middle Manager Hiring Has Plunged, And Those Jobs May Never Come Back | Business Insider
- Don’t Eliminate Your Middle Managers | HBR
- Amazon’s Great Un-bossing: Why Eliminating Middle Managers Could Hurt Employee Engagement 😮
- It’s Time To Rethink The Role Of The Middle Manager | Mckinsey
- The Resurrection Of The Middle Manager | Achurch
- Heroes Or Villains? Recasting Middle Management Roles, Processes, And Behaviours | Tarakci
- The Hidden Risks Of Eliminating Middle Managers: A Critical Insight
- Mass Layoffs Often Hit Middle Managers. The Cuts Are Largely Short-Sighted | BBC
- Who Wants To Be A Manager? | Radical Candor Podcast S6, Ep.14
- The Measurement Problem | Radical Candor Podcast S3, Ep.7
- How To Get Shit Done | Radical Candor Podcast S4, Ep.2
Radical Candor Checklist
- Tip number one. Make sure you know what a middle manager actually does. We are arguing here that middle managers have two important types of tasks. One of them is relationship and development related. First, they’re building strong connections to the individuals who are leading teams and making sure that those individuals are getting the coaching and development that they need in order to be successful. And the second is strategy alignment. They are having regular check-ins with individuals to make sure that the work that those teams are doing is properly resourced and aligned to the strategic objectives that the company has.
- Tip number two. If you’ve got a functioning definition of what a middle manager does, decide whether you’re unhappy with the job that middle managers are doing or whether you actually think that it would be more efficient for your organization to redistribute the tasks that a functional, effective middle manager is doing to different people in the company. It can be really challenging for the more senior managers and the team level managers to actually take on all of that work, so maybe the answer is actually managing your middle managers more effectively.
- Tip number three. if you’re a middle manager, think about how you can leverage technology to process information, to gather context, things that AI is really good at, while you focus on the things that are hard to replace, such as coaching and development, allocating resources that the teams that report into, ensuring that they have the resources they need to be successful and identify strategic opportunities.
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Middle Managers
[00:00:00] Jason Rosoff: Hello everybody and welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. I’m Jason Rosoff.
[00:00:07] Amy Sandler: I’m Amy Sandler and today we are talking about the role of managers of managers. And Kim is off leading a Radical Candor session. We think about managers of managers that are often referred to as middle or senior management and this is a nuanced role because it involves overseeing not just the work of individual contributors, but you’re also guiding and supporting other managers. We’ve had a couple of different conversations about managing managers. What do you do as a manager of managers? We’ll put those into the show notes. So the role of managers of managers, we’ve got a couple of different podcasts, we spoke about that. We’ll put them in the show notes. But at a high level, it involves overseeing not just the work of individual contributors.
[00:00:54] But also guiding and supporting other managers. And it can be crucial, be a crucial layer of management in larger organizations where coordination across teams and alignment with organizational goals is necessary. But recently there has been a trend and there seems to be a trend amongst trends where it’s the great blank. And this one is called the great flattening or the great unbossing. I’ve not seen the great embossing, but I kind of love that. Um, Business Insider reported that quote in October, 2024 employers were advertising forty-two percent fewer middle management positions than they did in April, 2022. Which means that those who lost their jobs in the great flattening are now facing a whole new horror. There aren’t any positions left for them to take, end quote.
[00:01:50] There’s a lot of other things happening beyond that, where, um, people are worried about effects on employee engagement, on coaching and mentoring, on communication. But Jason, I thought I would have you kick us off. Like, what’s happening here? Why are we seeing this trend? Why are people, uh, especially folks who are in senior roles who are eliminating these roles? Like what’s underneath that? What are they trying to do here?
[00:02:17] Jason Rosoff: I feel like we can rely on reporting to understand what they’re actually thinking, but there’s like a series of events that I’m quite familiar with that I think precedes a lot of these, uh, types of changes. So the series of events are, one, we are falling behind or somehow being passed by a competitor. Two, we look at the organization and we say, the problem is that we’re too slow to make decisions. There’s not enough risk taking going on. Three, you try to understand what might be causing that. Four, it’s very complicated to figure that out. And so instead, what you do is you look at, uh, you, you look at the things that are easy to measure. Like, uh, like your managers, uh, as opposed to like organizational culture, for example, which might be a much bigger driver, but it’s very hard to distinguish. Um, five, you identify that some managers cost more than other managers.
[00:03:27] Uh, those are your middle managers or your senior management folks. And then six, you’re like, okay, so we can make shareholders happy by, uh, speeding us up. And saving us a bunch of money. So I think there’s like a narrative here that the sort of self fulfilling prophecy that when you start investigating this, it always turns out that somehow it’s, it, it’s like the middle manager’s fault, uh, that this, uh, that certain things are or are not happening in the organization. And it just so happens that they’re like one of the most expensive resources that exist on any given team. Um, obviously I don’t buy that that’s a coincidence. Um, uh, but I do think, I, think it would be unfair of me to say that it’s completely wrong headed to believe that over layering of management is, can be a significant contributor to like stagnation and innovation or sort of slowness and decision making. I think that’s legitimate. I think there is something there. But part of the problem with that is a big chunk of the issue from my perspective is that it fundamentally misunderstands the role of a manager, which is to like coach, develop and help their team members.
[00:04:48] And in many organizations, the issue is that there is a cultural deference to authority and therefore decision making power tends to abrogate into the people who have the most sort of like control, like span of control or seniority in the organization’s hierarchy. And they remove that person thinking like that’s going to fix the problem. But the issue is like that just creates a vacuum and in that vacuum, somebody else like winds up assuming that role. So for a lot of teams, the result is unlikely to match the sort of hopes or expectations because what they haven’t solved is the fact that somehow the organizational culture has reinforced the idea that it’s someone with more seniority’s job to figure this out. Because that’s, I think, the problem that they’re really trying to solve.
[00:05:37] Amy Sandler: This is so interesting. So I just want to repeat back what I heard because it sounds to me like you’re really, you’re diagnosing the problem. And it sounds like the solution people go to is the one that feels more measurable or more obvious, which is money and a layer, which may in actually be a problem, but there’s other things going on. So you mentioned like we’re falling behind. There’s not enough risk taking and it’s complicated. And if Kim were here, I’m kind of trying to channel Kim a little bit and I feel like she would speak to something around the measurement problem and what gets measured gets managed. And what I heard you say is one of the biggest things is the sort of higher salary costs of a middle manager. And that tends to be somewhat of the potential fall guy, or at least an obvious thing that you can point to. Is that an accurate assessment of what you’re saying?
[00:06:30] Jason Rosoff: Totally. I think it’s quite easy to say like, what does this person do? You know, at a very sort of Office Space, the movie type of way, like, you know, I bring the specs from the customer to the engineer. Like there’s a sense that these jobs are, um, they’re not meaningful in their contribution. And I would say there is a way to be a middle manager that is not meaningful, does not meaningfully contribute to an organization. But if that person can be around for many years in an organization, I would argue that there’s some other issue with that organization.
[00:07:01] It’s not that that person’s behavior is being rewarded by the fact that they get to stay, right? So if you have an ineffective person in middle management, at some point, it’s the, like, it’s the organization’s fault, not that person’s fault. Especially if you’re saying the whole layer is ineffective. Like everybody in this layer of management is not doing their job correctly. Again, this is my intuition. And with some observation over the course of my career, my intuition is like, there’s a belief that these managers are behaving as sort of filters for information. Uh, a layer of inefficiency that’s sort of like determining what things get talked about and how things get decided and all this other stuff.
[00:07:42] And I think again could can be true. But that’s because that manager is not doing the job of management. They’re not doing their job correctly. But the belief is, if we take that filter out, that somehow the existing set of communication mechanisms and whatever else that we have in place will allow the next layer down of sort of leadership or management to take on, to do exactly what that person was doing, but do it better and more efficiently. I think that, that is the biggest fallacy in all of this because there is some benefit to some amount of information filtering. But more importantly, from my perspective, there’s a benefit of having someone whose job it is to look across things that are happening and try to help the people that report to them identify the most important information that they need to make the decisions to do their job effectively.
[00:08:35] Because I’ll tell you what, it’s really hard when you’re in the trenches to like pick your head up and look around. Like that’s very expensive. It’s like a context switching cost. Uh, it’s really, really hard to do that effectively. And so not being part of your job and then all of a sudden being a part of your job. That, that’s feels unfair to, like there’s, there’s like an assumption that that’s possible and I don’t think it’s possible in many cases.
[00:08:59] And the second thing is that the way that they, like they, the company has gotten used to communicating with this layer in place and often companies don’t have a great plan for how to replace, like how to reshape their communication in order to, uh, deal with the reality where that layer no longer exists. And so they wind up leaning on the same things that have worked for them before, which creates chaos for that layer down of managers, because now they’re like, drinking from the fire hose of like, all this stuff that um, you know, may or may not be relevant to them, or tailored particularly to them. And so, the people who can, make that transition, you know, maybe they’re better off. Uh, I think a lot of people can’t really do it. They can’t really do both of the jobs, like the job that their manager had and their other job. And restructuring often stops with, like, getting rid of the manager and doesn’t restructure the communication. It doesn’t restructure the job responsibilities of this next layer down manager such that they actually have time to do all the tasks that they would need to do in order to be successful.
[00:10:00] Amy Sandler: So Jason, one of the things I wanted to highlight was that this is not a new trend. I mean, situation is, has changed in terms of the economic situation, technology, but, you know, I’m sure if we could go back in the annals of management. Even just in the 1990s, you know, Jack Welch, who was the famous CEO of General Electric said middle managers are overpaid and underproductive excess that should be eliminated. And so I think there’s been this constant tension of, you know, what you said, first of all, what is it that they do? Is it needed? And I heard two things in what you said, and I think it would be interesting to look at, first of all, the actual people in the roles of middle management and are they doing the job effectively or not?
[00:10:47] So you said one of the things was these people are here. They’re actually not doing the role effectively or correctly, but they’re still there. So what is that saying organization wise? And then it also sounds like what you’re saying is that the organizations have not delineated the full role of what they’re doing. And it only becomes apparent when those roles are eliminated around communication and coaching and helping contributors see the kind of forest while they’re in the midst of the trees. Do you think that’s part of it, that all those pieces of what goes into being a middle manager have not been clearly defined both for the middle manager to succeed and for the organization to really value them?
[00:11:28] Jason Rosoff: Yes. And like, if we take it down, like, to like even more tactical. So like that, that’s like a, in some ways you’re asking a strategic question. That’s how I was like framing my thinking. But if we just get tactical for a second, which is the absolute required effect of this is that span of control or span of responsibility increases for the now senior managers in the organization. And there’s just like a practical problem of how many people can you hear from over the course of a week or a month or a year? Uh, like how many people’s ideas can you hear? And so if the goal is to increase the rate of innovation, how are you going to identify the like, the innovative ideas? How are you going to know what to invest in? In theory, the way you’re going to know what to invest in is by having conversations with all the people who are now reporting to you. But it’s just like a practical impossibility in many cases. So that’s like one example of like, just a tactical.
[00:12:24] Amy Sandler: And do you think the sort of devil’s advocate on that, or at least, um, and I don’t know if you’ve had conversations with leaders in some of these organizations, but would they say, oh, you know, that’s why we have AI or these different tools that are going to sort of bubble up these concerns or innovation opportunities.
[00:12:42] Jason Rosoff: I mean, maybe that will be true in the future. I don’t think it is true now, and it certainly wasn’t true in the 90s when Jack Welch was writing his treatise on why you should be removing this layer of management. So I believe there’s just like a fundamental problem there that maybe gets solved at least in part by AI. But the next tactical issue I don’t think gets easily solved by AI, which is like one of the things that helps people stay engaged over a long period of time is feeling like they are connected to and have a good relationship with their boss. And I believe if you have twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people reporting to you, you cannot possibly, like, it’s very I don’t want to project. So I would say I am not the kind of leader that can easily have a relation, like a good relationship with forty or fifty people.
[00:13:29] Amy Sandler: And don’t you think that’s even Kim’s, Kim’s philosophy of Radical Candor? Relationships don’t scale, but culture does. I mean, isn’t that kind of baked into Radical Candor in some respects?
[00:13:38] Jason Rosoff: It is from a performance perspective, but it’s not from an engagement perspective. Like, it is true that relationships don’t scale, but it doesn’t mean relationships aren’t important. Like, relationships are a fundamental component of engagement.
[00:13:51] Amy Sandler: Absolutely. No, I’m more just saying that’s why she says you can only have as many direct reports as you can have these one on one meetings and these conversations.
[00:14:00] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I guess what I’m saying is like, I think there’s a way to read what Kim is saying, which is like culture scales and for these organizations say, oh, we’re doing what Kim says, which is like, we’re building a culture and the culture is what scales. But I think like that, in the same way that Kim would argue, like, you don’t have to choose between being effective and being a jerk. I think it’s the same thing. Like you don’t have to choose. Yeah. Like it’s not a choice that you make.
[00:14:25] Amy Sandler: I think it’s like the unspoken, the relationships don’t scale. But you have to have the relationships for the culture to scale is what we’re saying. Yes?
[00:14:32] Jason Rosoff: Yes.
[00:14:32] Amy Sandler: It was almost so implicit to me that I didn’t state it and maybe that’s why it hasn’t been stated in, you know, with what Kim has said because it’s we are so focused on that one on one relationship.
[00:14:42] Jason Rosoff: Yes. I think important to articulate. Because I think there’s like, you know, a consultant out there with a sharp pencil saying, you know, like that is not going back to your measurement problem. That is not properly measuring the value of that relationship when they’re calculating the savings that we will get by flattening, uh, by flattening the organization. They’re not calculating it. Or, maybe a better way to say it is like, if they are calculating it, it seems like they’re underestimating it.
[00:15:21] Amy Sandler: Jason, I feel like we could go in a couple of different directions here. And I’m curious, you know, you’ve talked about this idea of layers and, um, it’s this concept is called D layering. Uh, there’s a recent BBC piece that had Amanda Jones, who’s a professor at King’s College London. Who says there’s a belief that the panacea is a flat organization where we can make decisions quickly. We can have shorter hierarchies and we can have bigger spans of control. And so I’m just curious, like, is there a world where you see, uh, in the future, there is this quick decision making shorter hierarchies? And is it about redefining what we mean by middle managers? Because it sounds like you’re saying we still need somebody to be able to guide people and have that sort of tree vision as well as forest vision, as well as the relationships. I’m just curious, like, where do you see, where’s the long term picture of where you see this role going?
[00:16:25] Jason Rosoff: I think it really depends on like the kind of work that the organization is actually doing. GE is a knowledge work organization. Like there are plants and you know what I’m saying, they’re making physical goods and stuff, but that’s like at the very end. Like when Jack Welch was talking about GE, he was talking about GE’s management culture, right? That the sort of like suited executive types. And I fundamentally, like, I just fundamentally believe that in order for, uh, for like knowledge work, especially like innovative or creative knowledge work to exist, to be successful, like you need to be at a container, like you need to exist in a container where it feels like you have the resources that you need, you have a place that you can turn when you run into trouble and you need help or you need advice. And that you have the support of the organization to do that work.
[00:17:20] Because it’s very like it can get very lonely or very sort of like nerve wracking to be trying to do something new and feel like you’re sort on your own. And you want to be reassured that what you’re doing is seen as valuable by the organization and that you have like, you have some kind of regular communication with someone that understands enough about what you’re doing enough about what the organization is trying to do, um, that they can provide the guidance that you need to make sure that at the end of the year, you actually wind up in a place that feels really aligned.
[00:17:47] And I think the idea that that can all happen sort of asynchronously or through an AI or there’s, you know what I’m saying? That that kind of alignment, I feel like my experience tells me that that kind of alignment happens through conversation, it doesn’t happen through documentation. Uh, because documentation is out of date the minute that you write it, and so that, that’s like, the fundamental problem is like, any artifact, like the reason why we call them artifacts is because they’re, they are from the past. And so I haven’t seen an organization that does that, that like can keep their artifacts up to date in such a way that people feel like, oh, I only need to refer to this artifact. And then I know exactly what’s going on in my company. I’ve never been in a place that has accomplished that.
[00:18:32] Amy Sandler: Are you talking about kind of like brain drain and sort of like human to human sharing. How we do things and here’s what this looks like. That we can’t, we can’t get everything out of my head into your head, um, without actually having that relationship. Is that somewhat of what you’re talking about?
[00:18:51] Jason Rosoff: That’s part of what I’m talking about. I think more fundamentally, I’m saying, like, if you eliminate middle management, if you eliminate people who have visibility down into the work that a manager’s team is doing and understanding whether or not that goal that they’re delivering on is truly aligned with the organization’s objectives and whether they’re properly resourced. Uh, and that, that’s a conversation that can happen once a week or once every other week, like at that level. Like no amount of documents, like I think the idea is that when you remove this layer, what you’re relying on is more infrequent check ins and some sort of like communication tool, right?
[00:19:29] Amy Sandler: Yeah.
[00:19:29] Jason Rosoff: A medium to communicate the vision of the organization. And what I’m saying is that the infrequent check ins, the theory is that the, these communication artifacts are taking the place of the more frequent check ins, right? Like, ’cause it’s just a, it’s a physical impossibility to have the same number of check ins ’cause you have twice or three times the number of direct reports that you had before. Uh, but somehow that that’s replacing it. What I was arguing was I have never seen a system of communication that replaces, with enough fidelity, that replaces the ongoing conversations with leaders. And so, like, to me, that seems like the fundamental like sticking point or bottleneck.
[00:20:10] Amy Sandler: So, you know, as you were sharing that, if we think about, and there’s been research showing that, you know, removing middle managers can lead to these kind of communication issues that you’re talking about. And it can actually hinder innovation, which is the whole point of often why people might be doing this, creating gaps in leadership. And, you know, it, you’re talking about this role of aligning kind of company strategy with the day-to-day employee tasks. And so I’m curious, like, just from your speaking to so many of our clients and articulating, you know, hey, we’re trying, we’re doing culture change here when we’re bringing in Radical Candor. And ways in which decision makers, whether they’re heads of talent or L and D, etcetera, how they can speak to the value of a commitment, like bringing Radical Candor to their organization, for example. Like what tips would you have for somebody, whether they’re in a senior leadership position or they’re advocating for their role as a middle manager? You know, absent some of that measurement, how can you push back to a move on this? How, what would you guide them to say, hey, here are the long term costs or here’s how I can make my case for the value of in our organization of middle managers?
[00:21:23] Jason Rosoff: I think though, if I was, so rather than saying like I’m advising someone, let me just like speak from my own perspective of like what I would do if I was in the position of like being on a team that was making this decision. And I would say, like, we need to be super clear eyed about what it is that we’re optimizing for and how we’re measuring success. And then, and we need to take a very close look at whether we honestly believe that by eliminating this position in its entirety, like, we’ve done what we need to do to achieve the results that we hope for. Because I don’t actually think it is essential that an organization has middle management. I think there is a way to build an organization that doesn’t require it. But I don’t think, it’s, the hard part is that the way that we arrive at this is not from like the ground up, like a full reimagining of how an organization might be structured in order to facilitate this. The way we arrive at this decision is by looking at the existing hierarchy and eliminating one layer of it and then assuming that the whole thing isn’t going to fall down like a house of cards.
[00:22:29] And I think that to me is a fundamental issue. So, like, the question is, um, if we’re, so I think you can do two things. You can make a positive case for what middle manager should be doing and then you can look at our middle managers, are our middle managers doing this task. So from my perspective, a middle manager is, uh, their goal is to make sure that the leaders of the teams that report to them have, uh, a clear vision for what their team, what the goals that their team needs to deliver on for the next year are. They have a clear understanding of how those goals are aligned to the sort of vision and mission as well as like the financial outcomes of the organization. And they have the ability to either assign or advocate for the resources that their team needs in order to be successful.
[00:23:19] That’s the sort of, like, interface to the rest of the organization, um, part of it. And then the other part of it is that they are mentoring, developing, coaching the people who report to them. And that that is also being measured by the, uh, in some non anecdotal way by actually looking at like, what are, how do the people who report to this person, like, how do they, um, how do they feel their skills are growing? Or how do they feel like their abilities are developing? Because a middle manager’s most important job is to make themselves replaceable, right? Is to say, look, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, like, here’s the person on the team who, or the people on the team that you could turn to step up and, uh, and help make sure that we didn’t drop a bunch of balls, uh, as a result of my, uh, my not being here. Regardless, so like all of those things are really important tasks.
[00:24:15] All the things I just described are really important tasks. And if the company agrees that they must be done and they still want to eliminate middle management, my question is who is going to do those tasks? And how are they also going to accomplish all their of the other work that they have? Uh, like that is the way that I would advocate against this. Is to say, like, because I think what’s probably happening is that you have a enough, I don’t want to say even a majority, but you have enough middle people and middle management roles who are not doing those jobs.
[00:24:55] Enough people in middle management roles who are like swooping in and taking the decision and taking the credit for the decision who are not doing the work of middle management. And you feel frustrated, uh, and as a result, they are actually creating inefficiency. And so my argument would be like look if we believe these tasks are important, that someone needs to do them, and we don’t have, and we don’t believe as I would argue that we can simply eliminate this role. Like what we do need to do is effectively manage middle managers. Like make sure they’re doing the work that they need to do.
[00:25:29] Amy Sandler: What’s coming up for me is growth framework where, you know, we’re putting folks who are on a steep or gradual growth trajectory and looking at, you know, how do we help support people? And there’s that box where somebody is, uh, I think they have the ability, but they’re not being resourced adequately. And there’s this question that Kim asked, which is, you know, manager, look yourself in the mirror a little bit, where it’s like, I haven’t equipped them. And so in some ways it sounds like what you’re saying is to those leadership teams, sort of look yourself in the mirror and say like, here are all these tasks. And maybe things haven’t been as efficient, but how are we going to actually get them done? So have we actually defined clearly what being a manager of managers or being what a middle manager is in our organization?
[00:26:17] Jason Rosoff: I would love to be in the room where someone argues that like no value is being created at all. There’s no, you know what I’m saying? Like nothing that a middle manager does actually matters in any way, shape or form. Like I have a hard time understanding how you would make that argument, if you are operating from a place of intellectual honesty about like what individual, what team leads need to be successful in their role as team leaders? Um, that there’s nothing that a middle manager does that helps. Because it’s certain, if you have them, it’s certainly not the case like, well, it’s almost certainly not the case that they’re, your senior leaders are doing all the coaching and mentoring, right? Like, that’s like, that’s not happening. Um, and so it would be, I’m admitting, like, I don’t know what that conversation would look like. But there, maybe there is a cogent argument to be made, I just don’t know what it is.
[00:27:15] Amy Sandler: Well, before we go, and I don’t know if you have any words of wisdom, but we’ll put this in the show notes. But, uh, it was, uh, it was an article where they shared that they’ve been hearing from managers who, first of all, their roles have been removed, um, this person said they all come across as smart and articulate. They’re all in their late forties to fifties and they didn’t expect their job search to be too difficult. And they had spent decades, you know, honing their skills, climbing the corporate ladder, uh, and they weren’t able to get roles and, uh, you know, after having all of these conversations that the realization is there just aren’t enough supervisory jobs to go around. And so I’m curious if you have any words of wisdom for this group of folks who feel like, gosh, I, that is me. Like I’ve been doing that and there aren’t, there is this sort of reduction of these roles, um, now what.
[00:28:16] Jason Rosoff: We didn’t talk about this exactly, but I do think that like the role of middle management is going to change in the world, like, you know, in a world with AI. Middle managers have some expertise, um, uh, that, you know, they haven’t had to, in many cases, if they’ve been in those roles for a long time, they maybe haven’t used that expertise exactly. And my guess is that, um, AI is going to make it so that there is a higher value that is placed on the sort of like middle manager player coach type person. In part because I think AI is going to support, is going to start to support, like, make it easier for, um, for leaders to shore up like areas of weakness. So I don’t think it’s going to take, you know, someone who’s completely failing at the role of middle management and make them successful. But what I do think is going to happen is it’s going to take someone who’s doing okay or even pretty good, um, and make it easier for them to do well in the role of management or middle management or even individual contributor roles.
[00:29:24] Like, I think the, uh, AI is going to raise the floor. And so, this idea of like pure management roles, um, uh, is probably, like the supply of those is probably going to tighten. And so what I would, my encouragement would be to think of like, um, a play, like to be on the lookout for opportunities that allow you to maybe flex some of, because like strategic planning is still a valuable muscle and like there’s the, it doesn’t have to be direct technical skills, like let’s say engineering or writing or, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Like, but think about how you can sort of do that, uh, reimagine your role in a way that is like supported by AI. Start experimenting now with like how AI can actually make you faster, more effective, more efficient at doing those things. So that you can focus even more closely on making sure that you’re developing the talent, the talented people that work for you, for example. I think one of the big things that AI is going to do, especially for middle managers, is, uh, speed up the rate at which they can sort of process context, which is one of the most expensive things that middle managers do. Um, and so instead of focusing on those skills, which is like how I gather information, how I process that information. Start focusing on the skill of how I turn information into plans that my team can then follow. Like the people who report to me can benefit from.
[00:30:54] Amy Sandler: And by processing context, as an example, are you talking about, like, here are the three action items coming out of it, summarizing what happened in survey results, those kinds of things?
[00:31:04] Jason Rosoff: Correct. So, like, right now, I think a lot of middle managers are like, oh, one thing I’m really good at is, like, connecting the dots between, like, I attend all these meetings, and as a result, I can sort of, like, see across these different things or perceive connections between these things. And I think that is going to be something that’s facilitated by AI. AI is going to get all the summaries from all the meetings. But what’s not going to necessarily be facilitated by AI is your ability to like ask the right questions so that you can turn the information, that context that’s being generated by the organization, into insights that might be really useful for your specific team.
[00:31:36] Like asking the right question is still going to be an important task and knowing what the team, what the people on your team really need is still going to be an important task. And so I think the role of middle manager who is like, you know whose job it is to like sort of filter and process information. I think I do think that is probably going away. Um, the role of middle manager as coach, the role of middle manager as, uh, like strategic, uh, developer, like a person who can help identify both people and projects, um, that are performing, uh, that have potential to perform exceptionally well, I think that that role is going to be is going to be here to stay.
[00:32:14] So I would start to think about if I was a middle manager, even if I wasn’t looking for a job right now, I would start to think about, how am I leveraging or how do I, how can I, how might I leverage AI to take away some of the sort of information processing tasks that I do and allow me to focus on result generating tasks that I do. That would be like my high level, uh, my high level guidance. And it’s not a word of wisdom, but maybe it’s a word of hope, which is like the, this is a pendulum that tends to swing. Right now it’s swinging in the direction of, you know, cutting this layer. And I think we’re going to figure out that relationships still matter and they’re not feeling the relationship, which leads to disengagement and all this other stuff like it’s likely to swing back the other, uh, the other way. So, uh, if you have the privilege of patience, then I would encourage some of that.
[00:33:11] Amy Sandler: Great notes to close with. So now it’s time for our Radical Candor checklist and let’s give you some tips so you can start putting this into practice.
[00:33:21] Jason Rosoff: Tip number one, make sure you know what a middle manager actually does. We are arguing here that middle managers have two important types of tasks. One of them is relationship related, relationship and development related. So they, they’re building strong connections to the individuals, uh, who are leading teams. And they’re making sure that they are getting the coaching and development that they need in order to be successful. And the second is, vision and sort of strategy alignment. They are having regular check ins with those folks to make sure that the work that those teams are doing is properly resourced and aligned to the strategic objectives that the company has.
[00:34:02] Tip number two, if you’ve got a functioning definition of what a middle manager does, decide whether it’s that you’re unhappy with the job that middle managers are doing, or whether you actually think that it would be more efficient for your organization to redistribute the tasks that a functional, effective middle manager is doing to different people in the company. Because it can be really, really challenging for the more senior managers and the team level managers to actually take on all of that work. So maybe the answer is actually managing your middle managers more effectively.
[00:34:39] Amy Sandler: Tip number three, if you’re a middle manager, think about how you can leverage technology to process information, to gather context, those things that AI is really good at, while you focus on the things that are hard to replace, such as coaching and development, allocating resources, that the teams that report into ensuring that they have the resources they need to be successful, and identify strategic opportunities.
[00:35:07] Head to RadicalCandor.com/podcast for the show notes for this episode. Praise in public, criticize in private. And if you like what you hear, we hope you do, please do rate and review wherever you’re listening. And don’t forget, join the Radical Candor community at RadicalCandor.com/communitypodcast. That’s RadicalCandor.com/communitypodcast. Get this podcast early and ad free. Bye for now.
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Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
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