Traditionally, climbing the corporate ladder was the sole definition of career progression, especially for people working in medium to large organisations. This made sense - for much of the twentieth century the way to success, and bigger incomes, greater benefits, higher professional standing, was essentially via the incremental pathway.
Of course, the tendency to promote on the basis of seniority or 'runs on the board' meant that many people were made managers who should not have been. They didn't really care or weren't sufficiently invested in the work of the organisation; they had no people management skills; they were in the wrong place (or the wrong career); they were actually good at their job before their promotions but then became really bad at it once they stopped being operational. The 'climbing the ladder' rationale was reinforced by the idea perpetrated by society at large that promotion was good, staying in the same place (or worse still, being demoted) was bad, meaning there was a lot of pressure on people to work beyond their level of competence.
Since the 1980s, the ladder has become a strange beast. In many industries it became shorter, or a few rungs were pulled out, leaving a gaping hole between the workers and the top echelon. In others the bottom rungs started getting wider and wider.
Above all, long slim ladders were replaced by lots of short stocky ones. Many large organisations were cut up into little pieces, which by default led to flatter structures. Take for example the Commonwealth Employment Service where I used to work - there were 16,000 people and three levels of management within individual offices, let alone the regional offices, the zone offices, state and national offices. Come 1998 when the government of the day closed up most of the Department that provided the infrastructure for the CES, and farmed out the services it couldn't simply get rid of to the myriad Job Network agencies, anyone who wanted to stay in the industry found themselves back down the ladder by at least a rung or two.
Strangely, the middle management rungs seem to be growing back. Maybe organisations have realised these people did something after all? Maybe with everyone under so much pressure, they have found that burnout is becoming a huge economic and social issue, and their answer to all of this is to give some people responsibility for other staff members.
The new management structure bears few similarities to those of eras past. While some of the old inappropriate beliefs about worthiness related to position have disappeared, there are plenty of new things to worry about. If you are one of the people who is working in a middle management role, you are probably wondering whether it is everything it is cracked up to be. You are probably finding that you are expected to be 'operational' as well as 'managerial'. You probably find it hard to delegate to those under you because they are already so busy that there are no more minutes to be squeezed out of them. You probably find that when one or more of your staff take a few days off without notice (commonly now accepted as legitimate 'mental health days') you can't get in replacements because the budget won't allow it, or because no-one else knows exactly what that person does. You possibly end up doing their work plus your work, or find yourself making a decision between the two.
As a middle manager in today's working environment, who do you go to when you are not coping? How do you manage competing priorities and crisis situations? Are there resources in your organisation, or even externally, to call on? Or are these simply non-existent. What does all this mean for your career satisfaction and personal success?
Cast your vote in this month's poll so we can start to build a clear picture of the issues middle managers face, and so that we can start addressing them.
