A short YouTube monologue (by Ashish Kothari) diagnosing a common organisational problem: middle managers are frequently overburdened, under-skilled and under-invested-in, which leads to burnout and disengagement. The speaker argues this ‘sandwich’ effect causes well-designed strategies from the top to fail during execution in the middle of organisations.
Chapters
What should be common sense is not common practice, right? Across all of my time, so much training when people come in, obviously all the leadership development coaching at the senior levels, but the middle of the organization which is actually getting both the all the bulk done I often find is the most overburdened, the most under skilled because nobody actually invests in them either in executing better or right or in terms of managing their people better are the most burnt out. And often because they feel sandwiched between the top and the bottom, they choose the path of disengagement because they're like literally I cannot handle pressure from both sides. So my choice is I'm just going to show up and I'm disengaged. And I see it over and over in organizations like brilliant strategies, smart people at the top, excited people who join in. But then the middle, all the strategies, they go to die, right? Nothing happens.