Commonly shared/held wisdom: leadership is flowing decisions down and information up. What if this is (slightly) untrue? Or at least, in need of contextualizing.
Strategy, direction, and context are set by leadership teams based on intuitions, abstractions, and trailing and leading numbers.
The bottom of the org chart has a far better idea of how to get things done than the top. And possibly, what to get done such that customers can succeed. This information _should_be passed up, but it’s not not decision-making.
Seems to me there’s a disconnect and opportunity here for tactics to meet strategy. When things are going well, decisions are guided and informed, but rarely does the middle layer take decisions on its own, instead delegating to the team or below or leadership above. When ambiguity is ascendent and clarity or confidence wane, decisions could flow down.
Contrary: information up, context down is the central conceptual model of middle management. The Fundamental Purpose of Middle Management: Context Down, Information Up:
This brings us back to the fundamental job of middle management: push context down, and information up. The job of a middle manager is to gather as much information from your reports as possible, synthesize it, and pass it up to their manager. At the same time, they should be collecting as much context from their management chain and peers, and passing that important context back down the chain. If you’re a middle manager this should be your guiding principle.
Context-down should provide a coherent backdrop for whatever steering of execution a manager does.
