We are having a lot of conversations with the leaders in our HR network about how 2023 will be the year for investing in middle managers. There is a recognition that a lot has been asked of this group over the last three years and in many cases they have not received much investment, financial or time, which they desperately needed. More importantly than looking backwards is the fact that there are difficult times ahead, which this group will need to navigate successfully if your business is to succeed.
The coming months will require, functions, teams and individuals to do more with less, refine hybrid ways of working, improve attraction and retention of key talent, along with the significant challenge of yet further rounds of restructuring, brought about by the economic pressures we are all facing. People managers will be required to step-up-and-go-again into more uncertain and volatile environments.
But whilst common sense might suggest directing precious funds to improve middle manager capability is a good course of action, is it actually a wise investment? This article explores that assumption so you can make an informed choice about who will be the best group to get your support in return for raising the performance of the organisation. If there are data to support the hypothesis then what skills, attitudes and beliefs might this group gain from developing (forthcoming article.)
This seems a useful question to answer now because perhaps more than at any point in the last 12 to 14 years, making sure you get every ounce of value back from what you spend, will be especially important to the medium and long-term success of your business.
What is organisational performance?
In order to assess whether your investment in people managers is a wise course of action, you will first need to know, in precise terms, what you are hoping to achieve. You would be able to make a much better range of decisions once you can answer these questions and more:
- What are the strategic imperatives you need to facilitate being delivered?
- When do you need to see these changes delivered?
- How do you afford to support a ‘critical mass’ to make the change happen?
- What indirect benefits would you be looking to achieve from any investment?
- How will your investment be a reflection of your organisation’s culture?
And once you are clear on the tangible outcomes you need to deliver against, what are the processes that will help you and the organisation get there? Well, there are many you could choose but I suggest that of them all, raising the level of performance across the organisation is one that is most likely to help achieve success. But what do we mean when we say, as many organisations do, “we want to raise our performance bar” and can we get to a practical idea of what that means, so we can apply it to everyday work? Defining organisational performance is challenging for an article like this. Outlining too generic a measure or set of KPI’s will inevitably miss the mark for most readers and render the discussion pointless. Therefore, let’s stay broad enough without being woolly. For the purposes of this article, let’s consider organisational performance to be:
“the range of agreed actions and, as yet unknown reactions, required to deliver the strategic objectives and priorities of a business within the established timeline.”
It may not be a perfect definition but it draws our focus to strategic deliverables being what all performance is ultimately directed towards, whilst still allowing you to overlay your own specific context. It also acknowledges that to deliver the desired business impacts the performance of the individuals, teams and functions within your organisation will have to be fleet of foot at times and agile both in their thinking and the responses they make.
The other key point to raise here is that an organisation is the sum of its parts. Every employee, irrespective of position in the hierarchy, has a contribution to make to the combined efforts that make up ‘organisational performance.’ No people = no organisation = no performance.
What impacts do managers facilitate, in improving organisational performance?
In our award-winning book, Leader iD, we stated that debating the difference between definitions of leaders and managers is a waste of precious thinking time and about as useful as debating what is a “sport” (which I had to do in a 3-hour long lecture at University many moons ago!) It is the activity of academics or those with a vested interest in the outcome. I don’t care because we are clear: If you have warm-blooded, heart-beating, humans, in your team, don’t worry about whether you are called a, ‘manager’ a ‘leader’ or even a ‘people manager’ (which is possibly the greatest hedge of all time!) Focus on those people in your team and start engaging with them, developing them, caring about them, role modelling for them, stretching them and celebrating with them.
Get these things right and organisations will start to see how their investments provide a multiple of returns. Research suggests that 70% of the variation in engagement across teams is the result of the manager. The stronger the manager’s capabilities the stronger the engagement in the team. Furthermore, that improved engagement drives another tangible benefit – performance. Whilst it is genuinely difficult to strip out all the variables when looking at organisational performance it is possible with smaller units such as a team. Research of these smaller units shows that management competence explained almost 15% of unit performance. If we extrapolate that figure, even conservatively, that is the difference between some businesses surviving or going under.
Increased contact with the line manager has also been shown to improve organisational commitment and job satisfaction, both key factors in improving retention. Finally, wellbeing can be positively impacted by skilled leaders and managers and that improved wellbeing picture across your business has hugely positive effects, on both human and a commercial levels.
Your decision
In conclusion then, yes, it seems the research data would support the idea that investing in manager capability development is strategically a good action to take. The principle is sound and if that development can be translated into actions, not to be taken as a given, then improvements should occur.
Now your decisions are what shape should that development be and where will you source it. In part 2 of this article we shall explore the specific areas of development that managers need to engage in if they are going to drive improvements in organisational performance and growth.
If you already know you want to develop your cohorts of managers, of course we would love to help you. But, there maybe providers who are a better fit for you. If so, it may be worth a few minutes of your time reading this short article and downloading the Exigence Supplier Identification Diagnostic tool. This robust tool will help you in that stage of your thinking and to save you time and money, we’re delighted to offer you completely free, the. Simply click here and get your free copy and start clarifying your development decisions now.
Exigence works with organisations to deliver full-stack HR leadership development solutions, from Executive and senior team coaching to group and AI coaching. If you would like to discuss how we can help you deliver quantifiable impacts for your organisation, we'd love to hear from you - just contact us here.