Don't forget middle management - especially the women

Wharton management professor Ethan Mollick has a message for knowledge-based companies: pay closer attention to your middle managers. They may have a greater impact on company performance than almost any other part of the organization!

Mollick found that it was middle managers, rather than innovators or company strategy, who best explained the differences in firm performance. Middle managers accounted for 22.3% of the variation in revenue among projects, as opposed to just over 7% explained by innovators and 21.3% explained by the organization itself – including firm strategy, leadership and practices. "Far from being interchangeable," Mollick writes, "individuals uniquely contribute to the success or failure of a firm…. For a lot of knowledge-based industries – it is all about the middle managers."

Earlier studies show that the impact of CEOs, CFOs and other top-level executives on large firms is limited. These top positions explain less than 5% of the variation in firm performance among Fortune 800 companies. In large, established organizations, "the top managers, at least, account for relatively little of why some companies perform better than others."

Mollick says. "We tend to think of companies as all about systems and not enough about people." He suggests that companies pay more attention to filling middle levels of management, figuring out who the best ones are and rewarding them appropriately.

Interesting to know that women often stagnate at middle management level. It's a level in which the pressure is high, support is relatively low and especially women come to question the meaning of their work. "Is it all worth it?" is a phrase we hear very often.

We also see many of these women experiencing great difficulties getting (small) training budgets. Wharton's research confirms it IS important to invest in middle managers, to make sure they develop balanced leadership skills. They make meaningful contributions to the organization's success and to its people. Let's start by valuing their work and offering more support.

Read more: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2783

Effective Leadership for Women Training: click here for more info and dates.