When UK retailer JD Sports announced the departure of its long-term boss Peter Cowgill last month, Chris Bird, a former non-executive director, predicted the company would be all right. “They’ve got good middle management in there with that JD DNA,” he said.
This was unusual backing for an often-derided manager group. “The very phrase ‘middle managers’ evokes mediocrity,” a 2001 Harvard Business Review article said. Middle managers have been under a 25 to 30-year assault, said McKinsey partner Bill Schaninger in a podcast last year. Michael Hammer and James Champy’s 1993 book Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, had “triggered a non-stop look at what we’re getting from the middle”, Schaninger said. The answer, in the view of many companies, was not much.
Bryan Hancock, another McKinsey partner, said the Covid-19 crisis had persuaded some top executives that there was even less need for middle managers. Those senior bosses had to make fast decisions during the pandemic, including moving to digital channels. And having taken action in weeks that once took years, many top executives felt maybe they could do that without as many management layers beneath them.