Organizational Learning and Middle Management

I had written earlier about Case for Engineering Management in IT Services and Case of diminishing value of Software Project Managers. Recently came across a chapter in the book "Peopleware" on Organizational Learning and the role middle management plays in it and felt it is even more relevant now. Few excerpts from that and some reflections below:-

Some organizations can learn and some can’t. the self-transforming organization has to face up to the following irreducible risk: Learning is limited by an organization’s ability to keep its people.

When turnover is high, learning is unlikely to stick or can’t take place at all. In such an organization, attempts to change skills or to introduce redesigned procedures are an exercise in futility. They may even act perversely to accelerate the rate of employee turnover.

The key question about organizational learning is not how it is done but where. most natural learning center for most organizations is at the level of that much maligned institution, middle management. This squares exactly with our own observation that successful learning organizations are always characterized by strong middle management.

The most likely learning center for any sizable organization is the white space that lies between and among middle managers. If this white space becomes a vital channel of communication, if middle managers can act together as the redesigners of the organization, sharing a common stake in the result, then the benefits of learning are likely to be realized. If, on the other hand, the white space is empty of communication and common purpose, learning comes to a standstill. Organizations in which middle managers are isolated, embattled, and fearful are nonstarters in this respect.

Value of good people, project and program managers is not exactly visible when they are there, hence difficult to point to a metric to justify their need. But it is visible when they are not there – wayward execution, slipping timelines, lack of team efficiency and net cost increase.  In current times of great resignation, need for selecting, training, retaining the team should ideally have increased their value even more.

Separating operations and people/project/program management – one of the stumbling blocks is the need for many managers to be involved in operations – recruitment, onboarding and offboarding, project financials including budgeting, invoicing and even collections. Taking the cost of separating operations as cost of running business into a PMO and leaving the managers to do what they do best would have been good. I would be curious to know if such successful models are practiced in organizations.

Guiding the team through career – while many seniors in the industry are moving more and more to individual contributor roles, these managers are the only ones who could guide the learning and growth of the team, working with people every day. For these conversations to start, they themselves need to be clear and secure in their own path first.

Pyramid and the cost factor – maintaining the pyramid has been the cornerstone of services industry. But it should be possible now for demonstrating and demanding value for many valuable sub-streams such as engineering management, product management, program management and transforming within services itself to a product/platform structure.

Come out and demonstrate the value – while fingers could be pointed to many external factors for undervaluing middle management, there is a risk of cruising within middle managers and getting sucked and being in comfort zone of executing day to day priorities. Consciously coming out of that shell and demonstrating value is needed as well to fight this battle.

I am curious to hear where this is working well and in what ways – creating clear paths for good people/project/program managers to evolve, separating operations and project/program management without diluting people management and creating engaged middle management who is learning themselves and leading the rest of the team's learning as well.