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Bad middle managers seem to be driven above everything else by a fear of rejection from the VP/C-Suite. They are reluctant to use the additional power of their
by majormajor 4y ago
Bad middle managers seem to be driven above everything else by a fear of rejection from the VP/C-Suite. They are reluctant to use the additional power of their role because they're more afraid of it backfiring or failing than they are of being mediocre.
You have a proposal and data and confidence and you put that in front of the VP? It makes sense to the VP, it's convincing, done.
You ask a bad middle manager to sign off on it themselves or put it in front of the VP themselves? Even if it makes sense to them they're gonna tie themselves in knots about how it might not be seen as a good idea to the VP, and why risk that on your behalf?
- AlbertCory 4y agoVery true. It's the same with lawyers: they're mortally afraid of some higher-up lawyer casting doubt on their approval of something, so they automatically say "out of an abundance of caution" and disapprove it. However much we trash Google now, I lay out in https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-one-the-movies https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o... how ten managers in a row approved my budget for the movies, on the grounds that "this is good for the whole company." Then at the very end, one succumbed to Middle Manager Syndrome. I went over his head.