The two things you’ll often hear given as a advice about where to start your expansion of organizational social is 1. Get the leaders (c-suite) on board and/or 2. focus on the workers and the work itself (grassroots). There is certainly truth that each of these groups being engaged is important but it can be painfully slow too. When we only focus on the top (direction setters) and the bottom (the doers) we are ignoring the middle (the executioners). I’d argue that those in the middle, the managers, are the key artery in the organization for change to happen. Especially in large organizations, middle management plays a key role for both executives and workers. Leadership looks to them to carryout the vision and for them to report on the work. Those below the managers rarely look at the executives as critical to their day-to-day activities, it’s their managers that hold all the keys.
If you can help middle managers see the benefits of greater social collaboration either between each other or for their teams, the top and the bottom will follow. Middle managers will report up the chain what they’re doing and the results of it, and team members are much more likely to follow the direction of their lead than the organizational leaders or even you.
Middle management is the heart of the organization and information and people are the life blood. They alone push valuable information out and pull people in.
