Mid-Level Management: An Essential Link Between Strategy and Execution

If leadership involves providing for change, movement, and setting the tone, management is responsible for coordinating efforts to get a job done with order and consistency. Yet, despite the need for these groups to work together toward a common purpose and understanding, our research shows that this is not happening. As a result, management can find themselves stuck in the middle between leadership and individual contributors; tasked with communicating and carrying out the desired goals and direction of leadership to their teams where in a perfect world, everyone understands the information in the same way. This brief white paper, informed by Dale Carnegie’s ongoing global research efforts,1 shares observations related to mid-level management and their important position as intermediary between leaders and individual contributors. In doing so, it focuses on the need and opportunity to improve communication at the mid-management level, given their unique role as intermediary between strategy and execution.