Is your organization on the cusp of a major change program or already in the middle of one, but you’re struggling to gain momentum?

Implementation is the most important stage of any major change effort. However, achieving widespread transformation is no minor feat, as 88% of transformation efforts fail to achieve their original ambition and 61% of business strategists say change initiatives fail because of poor strategy execution. The factor most responsible for being able to successfully or unsuccessfully capture value from change? According to McKinsey, it’s an ownership mindset and commitment to change across all levels of the organization—not just the top of the house.

Change can only happen if an organization’s team leaders and supervisors deeper in the organization are empowered to translate the vision into new ways of thinking and acting. This is why successfully capturing value from change depends on engaging and mobilizing middle management.

How Change Efforts Shake Up Social Systems

Companies are, at their very core, large collections of individuals striving to work together, where group dynamics and social elements always come into play. Similar to ancient tribes, people in a business have developed their own customs about events, customers, suppliers, and unwritten rules that define and dictate acceptable behavior norms. These behavioral norms are seen as the key to surviving (e.g., staying employed, being paid more, being promoted). These behaviors over time produce a highly refined social system that is invisible to its members and determines what can and cannot happen in the organization.

When transformational changes shake up the status quo, the very essence of that social system becomes disrupted. The norms, expectations, and survival formulas are threatened, and for many, the “certainty” of even a dysfunctional system is more comfortable than the “uncertainty” of something new and unprecedented. Fear is always a common reaction when the status quo is threatened.

Middle managers will be the ones to drive change at the center of the organization—yet middle managers are also stewards of these social systems. As such, middle managers stay close to the status quo to balance and please both upper managers and their teams. By disrupting as little as possible, they ensure that everyone remains comfortably within that highly refined social system that they steward. It’s not that they don’t want to see radical change come to their company; it’s that their role necessitates that they reduce risk. It’s up to executives to disrupt that thinking.

Middle Management: The Custodians and Challengers of Change

Middle managers are in a unique position in the organization because they’re not only managing down, they’re managing up. They are the bridge between strategy and execution, leading teams to meet objectives while translating high-level directives into ground-level action. Closer to daily operations than senior leadership, they see firsthand how plans play out in practice. Yet they must also align their work with a top-down vision that may not fully grasp frontline realities. A single executive request can cascade into hours of work for multiple people, and with limited time or support, middle managers often struggle to shift team mindsets—especially when new initiatives stack onto existing pressures, fueling stress and resistance.

It’s a tricky place to be in within a company. Because of this, middle managers may find themselves having conflicting roles as custodians of fostering and implementing change launched by executives while also challenging the value of some of those changes. They know best how to execute on the ground, but since executive strategic plans often lack the practical nuances required for implementation at the ground level, they can be skeptical of the new, high-level vision. This may cause them to be protective of their team’s tried-and-true processes against perceived radical change or be resistant because they’re uncertain how to integrate that change.

Because of their central role in the organization, middle managers are critical to any change program and also have the potential to capture the most value from that change. This is why middle managers must own the organization’s vision for change.

Executive leadership can send out as much messaging or host as many town halls as they would like, but change won’t happen until the middle of the organization can align its goals with the strategic vision of the company. Only then can a cohesive and motivated approach to new initiatives be achieved. So how can senior leadership onboard middle managers to their new vision and encourage them to disrupt the status quo?

Three Key Behaviors to Mobilize Middle Management

Elevating a middle manager’s sense of ownership and investment in the changes happening in the organization are imperative in accelerating the adoption of those changes from C-suite to front line. Here are three key behaviors executives can adopt to more effectively engage and empower middle managers to rise to the requirements of change.

1. Be authentic and candid.

Top executives presenting a transformation vision are often extremely polished. On one hand, this polish is necessary to convey to the workforce that they know what they are doing and where they are taking the company. However, this can leave little space for acknowledging the underlying skepticism, doubts, and fears that middle managers and other employees have about what is viewed as a major upheaval—feelings that may later turn into resistance to change and commitment to the vision.

Instead, executives can set an example that gives the workforce permission to be human, like securely expressing feelings that are perceived as negative and riskier to share. By being honest about their own experience with change, executives can set the stage for what everyone is about to go through while also pointing the way to the other side.

One of our clients, the CEO of a multibillion-dollar North American energy solutions company wanted to reignite growth and resilience by reimagining the enterprise—everything from how it was structured to individual roles and responsibilities. It wasn’t an easy plan to solidify, and the senior leadership team struggled for a time before arriving at a shared path forward.

Yet when introducing the transformation to the company, instead of presenting a polished plan, the CEO and executive team were honest about the issues, conflicts, and skepticism they faced before coalescing around the way forward. They reassured the rest of the workforce that while they would likely go through a similar process of struggle, they would get through it and the process would be worth it. This candid presentation was a defining moment in rallying middle management to invest in the transformation effort. The 12 months following the company-wide roll-out were powerful, and nearly every first-year milestone was achieved.

2. Get interested in what’s on middle managers’ minds.

Executives should recognize that their perspective is not universally shared across their organization and that what motivates them will not necessarily inspire their workforce. Executives tend to participate in financial upside and downside more so than the front line. With rare exceptions, what matters to the majority of people is seldom about financial or performance outcomes but more about finding purpose and meaning in the work, being part of something bigger, and having the freedom to innovate and make the work experience more productive, enjoyable, and effective.

By knowing what’s top-of-mind for middle managers, where their priorities are, and what motivates them, leadership can better communicate their vision for change and align everyone more easily to common goals. This means creating an environment in which the most powerful and compelling conversations for change can emerge. In these conversations, encourage middle managers to speak about what they see and what they think is meaningful to their people. If they experience that what they say matters and can positively impact their team, then their ownership of those plans and capturing the value from those changes increases.

Four months into his new role, the CEO of a European gas distribution company uncovered severe operational issues that put the business at risk. He needed to move fast to course correct, so he went directly to middle management, holding frank discussions about the issues impeding operational performance. This empowered them to voice their aspirations for change and undertake significant projects to right the ship. Within a year, operational efficiency had improved, taking the company from the lowest market performer to best in class.

3. Resist the temptation to prescribe the details.

With major change efforts, taking a command-and-control approach can lead to resistance if it comes on too strong, negatively impacting performance and value capture. Instead, the executive team needs to focus on mobilizing the workforce around their vision for the future. But how?

One of the ways organizations can be more successful in strategy implementation is by involving middle management during strategy design. If middle managers are responsible for translating strategy into reliable performance while embodying the values and standards of the executive team, they must play a role in designing and owning the change effort. This can be done not by dictating the details of change to them, but by inviting them to co-create the plan for change together.

Instead of supplying a complete map, senior leadership can provide the destination and let their people chart the course. Because middle managers are much closer to the front line of execution, they have experience, insights, and suggestions on how to effectively translate the strategy from vision to the tasks, processes, and initiatives needed for implementation.

This was the approach the aforementioned European CEO took when engaging middle managers. Instead of creating the plan himself and dictating how it was to be executed, he engaged those who would be implementing the strategy and had them fill in the details. This strategic move not only democratized the change process but also ensured a powerful and effective shift toward collective growth and innovation. It also increased middle manager ownership and accountability.

Cultivating Tomorrow’s Leaders Through Today’s Change

The success of any major change effort hinges on the entire organization owning and committing to that change. By engaging middle managers in meaningful and authentic dialogue, understanding their fears and aspirations, and empowering them to lead the charge, executives can accelerate the pace of change and the potential for value creation.

When combined with executives consistently modeling what’s most important to the company’s future, these behaviors provide both clear direction and empowerment for middle management—helping them understand where to focus their time and energy. Together, they create the highest likelihood of successful execution for any change initiative.