2020-02-01_strategy+business

will embrace change. It’s important to understand what’s causing these reactions,

because middle managers are the drivers of business performance.

INSEAD’s Quy Nguyen Huy describes middle managers’ contribution in

three areas — all related to interpersonal human skills — that are essential for

the implementation of transformation programs:

• Middle managers are far better than most senior executives at using
  informal organizational networks to bring about substantive, lasting change.
  They know more people and are closer to them, and are more influential than
  senior managers can ever hope to be.


• They are tuned in to the moods and emotional needs of employees, which
  helps them keep pushing change forward.


• They effectively manage the tension between change and the status quo —
  they keep the organization from falling into inertia, on the one hand, or chaos,
  on the other hand.
  These are uniquely human attributes that can’t be replicated by machines.
  PwC’s research shows that CEOs value emotion-based skills — leadership,
  resilience, problem solving, and creativity — but also that 77 percent of CEOs
  are struggling to find them. In many cases, middle manager change agents are
  likely to be down the hall — but leadership hasn’t been able to bring out the
  best in them. In a recent PwC survey of CEOs and HR managers, 55 percent of
  respondents said they had not taken action to create a clear narrative about the
  future of their workforce and automation. That omission creates uncertainty and
  resistance, not least because it often directly affects the people who are tasked with
  implementing the change. Digital transformation is an emotional and loaded
  issue for any workforce.
  PwC’s economic analysis shows that one in three jobs is likely to be severely
  disrupted or to disappear in the next decade because of technological change.
  This could affect almost half of all low-skilled workers and a third of semiskilled
  workers, the very people middle managers oversee. And the middle managers
  themselves will find their roles changing, too. They may also feel that at their
  age or level of seniority, they do not need to acquire new skills. Long-standing
  managers have seen a lot of changes, have lived through a lot of trends, and know
  that not every new management initiative is going to be a success — far from it.

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