Bill Midgley column

Apr 19 2006 By Bill Midgley, The Journal

One of the criticisms many junior managers make is that they are subject to "micro- management"; an increasing level of control over minor issues where managers should really be empowered to make their own decisions, and subsequently to be held accountable for such decisions.

Micro-management, to my mind, comes from two sources. Firstly, an inability of those who have been promoted on the Peter system to let go, or indeed to have any confidence in those who work for them, perhaps because they reflect their own inadequacies. And secondly, it is an ideal way in which middle management justifies its existence.

Middle management is often the soft underbelly of many organisations. It grows and often exists to serve little purpose. Companies far too easily promote some of their shop floor operatives and junior managers into middle management merely to reward their long service and loyalty without thinking of what service they provide.

They often sit between the bright young brains and the real decision makers, refusing to pass on ideas either because they cannot understand them or because they jeopardise the whole middle structure of an organisation.

In the UK we need to look at many of our operations and have a far flatter management structure.

That means empowering younger managers - real empowerment, not just paying lip service to the word. That in turn will quickly identify those managers who are the real leaders of the future, and remove protection from those whose very existence seems to stifle good performance.

Large numbers of management are often being made redundant in companies facing trading difficulties, yet within a short period of time those same companies are so often again removing management a few years later when further difficulties have to be resolved.

British business is not competitive, but it can start to make itself far more so by reducing dead wood, ensuring that the line of communication from the boardroom to the shopfloor in as short a time as possible, and in particular by giving real authority to managers lower down the scale rather than having a level of management who do no more than serve their own interests and check up on the activities of a more junior and often more effective level of management.

Bill Midgley is president of the British Chambers of Commerce