Power to the Middle

CHAPTER 2 A Look at the Forces That Got Us Here A Technology Boom, a Financial Crash, and Then Covid-19

How, exactly, did we get to the point where middle managers have become so misused, misunderstood, and neglected? A combination of economic and societal forces led us to this point; a clearer awareness of these forces can steer us toward a more future-forward way of managing people.

Whole books have been written about the history of management. We only have room to give you the Cliffs Notes version here. What we want to make especially clear is that in the last twenty-five years, three major events resulted in a profound misunderstanding of managers’ purpose: the technology boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, the financial crisis of 2008, ...