I think this article lays out something I knew through observation, but hadn’t cognitively thought through before.
I’ve definitely seen what he calls “corporate managers” struggle in smaller companies, just as much as I’ve seen what he calls “lean middle managers” fight themselves to death in corporate scenarios.
-Author here- thanks! And yeah that is exactly the point... it's a mismatch in expectations and a misplacement of the person.
It's very similar to being an IC in a sales oriented company vs a product company.
The big issue is that most companies look for the "lean" type and then expects them to be the corporate type and this creates a lot of unhappiness in both sides!!
Thanks very much for writing this article and for describing very eloquently something that I to have observed but hadn't been able to articulate.
The really scary thing, from my perspective at least, is that I have, in a few different places, seen a drift over time from the lean style to the corporate style. A start-up grows into a larger company. A layer of middle management is hired. The HR department becomes more than one person. Now there are processes that need to be followed... The lean management style that used to work doesn't work any more. The sort of feedback that used to be welcomed is now seen as negative. I've witnessed quite a few people get burned out and have to leave companies that they used to be successful in. I guess knowing is half the battle so thank you for writing this great piece.
Thank you for the comment!
Absolutely agree, that is a natural (even though I believe not mandatory) phase of the evolution of a startup/lean company into a scaled organisation.
I am not against processes, people need a certain guide over how to handle situations, and I absolutely understand why people would leave, and they should! Because if they don't want to work in a certain way, simply the company is not providing a good environment for them to grow.
The negativity part is intrinsic to the idea that you become 1) a motivator for your team 2) the operational arm of leadership. Your are not supposed to say "we should not do this" because this is creating an issue to the org that is in hyper growth and cannot be focused in changing processes or following everyone's opinion, but should be focused in growth and whatever strategic objective they want to achieve.
Another issue is that normally, in those hyper growth phases, companies hire people that had similar previous experience and normally they all see this type of control as necessary to grow. They start looking for predictability (so you start seeing year long roadmaps, change request processes, waterfall processes, precise long term estimations etc) and uniformity, because if your company is growing by the hundreds they don't know how to control that without normalising and unifying the way people work.
Normally this type of leadership does not work in a fail safe environment, are not used to give space for people to try and do experiments and is very focused in making things look good to upper management.
As an example, one of my directors once told us managers that every team had to have the same shape and the same distribution of seniority, completely ignoring the different services each team owned and seniority required by those services. I still don't know what problem he was trying to fix, or if this would have fixed any problem at all. We gave feedback, and still had to do the job and explain to the team members why this was good for the tribe.
I think you misunderstand corporate middle management.
As a manager in a large corporation you are expected to be an aligner. That's the basis of the job, the least you can do. You need to align your team with the goals of the people above you. Note that I purposefully did not say the goals of the corporation. Large companies are political by nature. Different levels of the companies may have different goals. Finding a way to please the people that matter to your progression is your role.
If you want to move up as a corporate middle manager, you definitely have to contribute to process and provide useful feedbacks to your boss. But you need to be savvy in how you do it. You have to manage frictions and strive to make the people above you look good. It's very different than in a small company because there are far more toes to step on and you have to use a lot more tools to create leverage.
Corporations value people who are good at politics more than anything because that's how they work. If you are openly clashing with other managers and your hierarchy all the time, you are doing it very wrong.
Thanks a lot for your comment! I actually agree with you, maybe it did not come out from the post so let me clarify a little bit.
Align your team with the goals of the people above you takes you out of the picture as active contributor and excludes any type of experimentation and fail-safe environment on how to set those goals, which is normally what a lean manager wants to do.
You can also give feedback, and normally is also requested by the org, but for what I saw, directly and by asking a lot of corporate managers too, usually only to confirm that "everything is fine". Upper Management wants a happy, engaged org and does not want to deal with individual problems and misalignments, that's why they hired you.
If your team reports critical feedback, normally the org (meaning the people above you) only want you to manage that discomfort and change the team opinion, as you say, aligning them with the objectives and reality.
I'll give you a more relatable example. Some projects don't invest much in testing, the client does not want to pay for that, ICs complain to their manager and the manager is not supposed to give feedback up or force the client to invest in testing, instead it's supposed to help them understand the situation and refocus their purpose aligning them with the objectives of the team/department/vertical etc.
And to be super clear, while in the beginning of my career I hated this, I don't think it's wrong! As a matter of fact, given the situation, that approach is the best thing to do, for the people, the team, the company and the client.
If you put a Lean Manager to manage that situation, the manager will be extremely unhappy to handle it and will have a hard time motivating the team because it goes against its own values and beliefs.
As I said in the post, one is not better than the other but they need to 1) be aware of the expectations and requirements of the job and 2) be honest with themselves because the 2 different environments are not compatible.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 21.8 ms ] threadI’ve definitely seen what he calls “corporate managers” struggle in smaller companies, just as much as I’ve seen what he calls “lean middle managers” fight themselves to death in corporate scenarios.
The really scary thing, from my perspective at least, is that I have, in a few different places, seen a drift over time from the lean style to the corporate style. A start-up grows into a larger company. A layer of middle management is hired. The HR department becomes more than one person. Now there are processes that need to be followed... The lean management style that used to work doesn't work any more. The sort of feedback that used to be welcomed is now seen as negative. I've witnessed quite a few people get burned out and have to leave companies that they used to be successful in. I guess knowing is half the battle so thank you for writing this great piece.
Another issue is that normally, in those hyper growth phases, companies hire people that had similar previous experience and normally they all see this type of control as necessary to grow. They start looking for predictability (so you start seeing year long roadmaps, change request processes, waterfall processes, precise long term estimations etc) and uniformity, because if your company is growing by the hundreds they don't know how to control that without normalising and unifying the way people work. Normally this type of leadership does not work in a fail safe environment, are not used to give space for people to try and do experiments and is very focused in making things look good to upper management.
As an example, one of my directors once told us managers that every team had to have the same shape and the same distribution of seniority, completely ignoring the different services each team owned and seniority required by those services. I still don't know what problem he was trying to fix, or if this would have fixed any problem at all. We gave feedback, and still had to do the job and explain to the team members why this was good for the tribe.
As a manager in a large corporation you are expected to be an aligner. That's the basis of the job, the least you can do. You need to align your team with the goals of the people above you. Note that I purposefully did not say the goals of the corporation. Large companies are political by nature. Different levels of the companies may have different goals. Finding a way to please the people that matter to your progression is your role.
If you want to move up as a corporate middle manager, you definitely have to contribute to process and provide useful feedbacks to your boss. But you need to be savvy in how you do it. You have to manage frictions and strive to make the people above you look good. It's very different than in a small company because there are far more toes to step on and you have to use a lot more tools to create leverage.
Corporations value people who are good at politics more than anything because that's how they work. If you are openly clashing with other managers and your hierarchy all the time, you are doing it very wrong.
You can also give feedback, and normally is also requested by the org, but for what I saw, directly and by asking a lot of corporate managers too, usually only to confirm that "everything is fine". Upper Management wants a happy, engaged org and does not want to deal with individual problems and misalignments, that's why they hired you.
If your team reports critical feedback, normally the org (meaning the people above you) only want you to manage that discomfort and change the team opinion, as you say, aligning them with the objectives and reality.
I'll give you a more relatable example. Some projects don't invest much in testing, the client does not want to pay for that, ICs complain to their manager and the manager is not supposed to give feedback up or force the client to invest in testing, instead it's supposed to help them understand the situation and refocus their purpose aligning them with the objectives of the team/department/vertical etc.
And to be super clear, while in the beginning of my career I hated this, I don't think it's wrong! As a matter of fact, given the situation, that approach is the best thing to do, for the people, the team, the company and the client. If you put a Lean Manager to manage that situation, the manager will be extremely unhappy to handle it and will have a hard time motivating the team because it goes against its own values and beliefs.
As I said in the post, one is not better than the other but they need to 1) be aware of the expectations and requirements of the job and 2) be honest with themselves because the 2 different environments are not compatible.