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The middle manager brain has "consistency" as a terminal value. Being responsible for more activity than they can hope to substantively understand, they "need"

The middle manager brain has "consistency" as a terminal value. Being responsible for more activity than they can hope to substantively understand, they "need" systems that make it all look the same so it can be measured, summarized, compared, etc. Otherwise they get the intuitive sense that it's all chaos and mayhem and can't possibly be working well. It's the same sort of thing as an architect being mad that different services have different internal architectures, tech stacks, code styles. It's true that such differences make it unreasonably difficult to understand or manage things at the abstraction level of the middle manager or architect's portfolio. But it misses the question of how and whether things should be managed from that level at all. Often you have someone stepping into a working bottoms-up emergent order (like the internet, or a market economy) hamfistedly trying to implement top-down central planning control. SAFe is a tool of choice for these attempts. The radicalism of "true agile" is not about the duration of the planning cycle, but about the level of autonomy and control vested way down in the leaves of an org chart.

twawaaay 4y ago
I think the issue is that middle management does not yet have "true" leadership ability. Rather than getting people to do what they want, they are trying to build systems to achieve the same. Too bad they don't understand you can't force people to do things. Not knowing how to actually manage at larger scale, they are trying to solve the problem the same way that worked for them at small scale and just scale it up. The issue with the place I worked and described was the director tried to build systems to "ensure" everything was organised. He could not conceive this could actually be bad. That his job was actually to focus on building environment, making sure lower levels have everything they need to be able to build more efficient systems at small scale. He was a low level manager promoted too fast and missed the fact that his job changed.
- cdavid 4y ago
  One issue is visibility. If things are perceived as not going as well as they should, and there is no visibility, it is extremely difficult for any leader to defend their group. To focus on building the environment, there are broadly two situations that can happen. 1. your director has broadly speaking total support from his leadership, and the leadership will be "patient" and trust the director to do things. 2. there is no such support, you better deliver on your KPI or you're next. In most cases, it is in between 1 and 2 of course. If it is not mostly 1., there the director will not be able to do much without understanding the delivery. If your director needs to "push back" to help foster a good environment, they will need some ammunitions, which will likely require commitments (in time, KPI, etc.). To be honest, it is really hard. I myself recently became director, taking over teams that were self-organized but had high attrition. "Do I enforce too much / not enough process" is a question I ask myself very regularly.
acjohnson55 4y ago
That's a failure mode of middle management, but it's not a problem inherent to middle managers. Good middle managers know that every team has its own best ways of working, just as a good manager tailors their actions to individual reports' needs.
Terretta 4y ago
Big difference between consistency* and rhythm. Teams should play jazz with other teams. * “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen..." — Emerson
rab-the-goat 4y ago
This comment gets right to the root of the problem. People standing above emergent order looking down (typically) want to control it, but they'll never have the knowledge or bandwidth to control it well. So we play out Soviet economics over and over again in the corporate world.

twawaaay 4y ago

I think the issue is that middle management does not yet have "true" leadership ability. Rather than getting people to do what they want, they are trying to build systems to achieve the same. Too bad they don't understand you can't force people to do things. Not knowing how to actually manage at larger scale, they are trying to solve the problem the same way that worked for them at small scale and just scale it up. The issue with the place I worked and described was the director tried to build systems to "ensure" everything was organised. He could not conceive this could actually be bad. That his job was actually to focus on building environment, making sure lower levels have everything they need to be able to build more efficient systems at small scale. He was a low level manager promoted too fast and missed the fact that his job changed.

cdavid 4y ago
One issue is visibility. If things are perceived as not going as well as they should, and there is no visibility, it is extremely difficult for any leader to defend their group. To focus on building the environment, there are broadly two situations that can happen. 1. your director has broadly speaking total support from his leadership, and the leadership will be "patient" and trust the director to do things. 2. there is no such support, you better deliver on your KPI or you're next. In most cases, it is in between 1 and 2 of course. If it is not mostly 1., there the director will not be able to do much without understanding the delivery. If your director needs to "push back" to help foster a good environment, they will need some ammunitions, which will likely require commitments (in time, KPI, etc.). To be honest, it is really hard. I myself recently became director, taking over teams that were self-organized but had high attrition. "Do I enforce too much / not enough process" is a question I ask myself very regularly.

acjohnson55 4y ago

That's a failure mode of middle management, but it's not a problem inherent to middle managers. Good middle managers know that every team has its own best ways of working, just as a good manager tailors their actions to individual reports' needs.

Terretta 4y ago

Big difference between consistency* and rhythm. Teams should play jazz with other teams. * “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen..." — Emerson

rab-the-goat 4y ago

This comment gets right to the root of the problem. People standing above emergent order looking down (typically) want to control it, but they'll never have the knowledge or bandwidth to control it well. So we play out Soviet economics over and over again in the corporate world.