The poor performance of middle managers costs the UK £220 billion a year, but who’s to blame? Management consultant John Pope investigates.

According to a survey of directors and senior managers on the quality of their middle managers, poor middle manager performance costs the UK economy some £220 billion a year.

And 40 percent of those senior managers think that their middle managers are the biggest single barrier to achieving business objectives. Scandalous! Shocking! Before we reach for the axe and get rid of them, or send them on training programmes, there are some questions to be answered.

– Who put them there?
The directors and senior managers

– And were they satisfactory then?
Well, yes, they wanted promotion, they weren’t perfect but they had some potential.

– And are they duds now?
Yes.

– And you’ve been managing them?
Yes, but I have a lot of other work to do.

– So what have you done to them or for them?
… … …

Yes! It’s the directors and senior managers who have done this and even if it was not deliberate, they are still responsible for this poor performance and for putting the problems right.

So what happened? For those who have forgotten the many examples shown in Scott Adams’ Dilbert and his pointy-haired boss, I can give some examples:

• You promoted them because of technical and specialist knowledge but didn’t explain that the manager’s job is to get outstanding results through other people
• you sat on them and squashed their initiatives – even when their initiatives were successful
• you poured cold water on them – or their ideas. Then when you got consultants in you accepted those same ideas
• you fenced them in with all sort of restrictions, sometimes only telling them about the fence when they had got round it
• you led them in several different directions or gave them too many different objectives, some of which conflicted, or failed to discuss their priorities until they achieved the ‘wrong ones’
• you wasted their time by asking for things or information which they later found you never used
• you didn’t consult them on the practical aspects of some of the changes you introduced, or the new systems which you were having built and then expected them to resolve the problems which arose later without any extra help
• you destroyed their plans, or work, before their eyes – sometimes in public
• you reversed their decisions, or only backed them half-heartedly when they were dealing with ‘performance issues’ in their staff
• you buried them with paper – or its electronic equivalent

And just when they thought they understood their jobs, their aims and the way they related to their colleagues you had another reorganisation – reviving the way it was one or two reorganisations ago.

And to cap it all – you told the world through those consultants they were useless – how motivating!

Now, this diatribe is not about the lack of training, which might help some of those ‘useless managers’. As those who have run a management training programme in-house will know, the managers will say at some stage “That’s fine – we understand and agree with what you have told us about how we can manage better – when are you going to tell my boss?” at which you extricate yourself with some difficulty.

Many of those inadequate middle managers can be revitalised. I have seen it done, and also been fortunate as a management consultant in working with an outstanding senior manager who has revitalised four substantial businesses by his leadership and down-to-earth approach. And as he says – it is not rocket science. Not all of those managers were revitalised; for some it was too late, and they had to go. But the better ones responded – sometimes amazingly well to the combination of clear aims and direction, realistic objectives, consultation, involvement, the sense of urgency and pace he provided.

Oh, and he never told them, or anyone else, that his staff were useless.

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A note about myself

John Pope has been a management consultant for 40 years and seen management fashions come and go. He has worked to improve the development and performance of managers and management teams at all levels for most of his career. He has strong views on the terrible waste of people’s talents at work. He has a reputation for original thinking on management issues. His papers help managers on a wide range of topics, and set out underlying principles and factors in a clear way.