You Flattened the Org. Now Strengthen the Middle.
How to Rebuild Leadership Capacity in a Flatter Organization
The org chart looks flatter, but not necessarily fitter.
Over the past two years, many executive teams dramatically flattened their organizations to relieve margin pressure, fund AI investments, and move decisions closer to the work. In many cases, this was the right call. In others, the flattening continued even in already lean, well-run companies. This overpivot has brought us to a point where executives perceive a lack of accountability, while middle managers are overstretched and stressed.
Here is what I am hearing from executive leaders:
"We’re leaner, but not executing well. I want to see more ownership."
"Middle managers are in over their heads."
And from middle managers:
“My scope nearly doubled, but I got no additional resources or compensation.”
“I feel like I am being set up to fail.”
Sadly, this last sentiment is more pervasive than most executives realize. The leaders responsible for client growth, retention, innovation, and operations are frustrated and overstretched, yet told to “toughen up.”
I have listened and observed carefully, and I do not see evidence of a work ethic or intelligence gap. Flattening did not eliminate leadership work; it redistributed it, mostly downstream. Across industries, capable middle managers are working harder than ever and care deeply. They simply have not been set up for success and may not yet have the skills required for their expanded roles.
What I do see is a structural challenge. If you look at trends in performance, productivity, engagement, and retention, you may already see erosion. The instinct is often to attribute that to accountability gaps in the middle. I encourage you to ask a different question: Did we increase leadership responsibility and scope without increasing leadership capacity?
In many organizations, the core issue is not commitment; it’s capacity. You do not need to reverse the great flattening. You do need to redesign the role in the middle, strengthen the systems around it, and invest in leadership development to upskill leaders for their expanded responsibilities.
If you want your flatter structure to deliver, focus on these five areas within your control.
1. Redefine the middle manager role and improve support systems
With 10 or more direct reports, this is a leadership role first. Be explicit about what they should prioritize and what they should stop doing. A flatter structure cannot absorb an ever-growing list of initiatives. Senior leaders must be disciplined about priorities and clear about expectations. Recalibrate how much time middle managers spend on individual contributor tasks versus leading, making decisions, and coaching.
Identify time sinks that do not add tangible value to clients or execution. Streamline reporting, automate where possible, and eliminate unnecessary meetings. Distribute special projects and representation roles across the team. Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. Build trust and clarify when someone is speaking for themselves versus representing the broader team. Clarifying the role and reducing operational noise are among the fastest ways to restore leadership capacity.
2. Strengthen decision-making and empowerment
Reduce bottlenecks and micromanagement. Establish clear decision rules for day-to-day calls. When can a manager backfill an open role without multiple approvals? What expense thresholds or system approvals are within their full authority? Set the guardrails, define ownership, and then coach on judgment and decision-making to help your middle managers progress toward greater autonomy.
You can also shift the tone and agendas of your 1:1s. Move from “What decisions do you need from me?” to “What decisions are you working on? How is your coaching impacting team performance and partner collaboration?” Share decision-making criteria and perspective to guide their thinking rather than swooping in with the answer.
3. Protect coaching and talent reviews
If managers are leading more people, they need time to develop them. Protect and expect meaningful 1:1 and team coaching. Encourage managers to focus coaching conversations on strengths, performance behaviors, and career progression. Those are the levers that ultimately move the metrics. If you expect managers to coach consistently, model it yourself. Make your 1:1s developmental, not just operational.
Make talent reviews substantive. Discuss performance, potential, and succession planning to understand your bench and support it intentionally. Have semi-annual career conversations with your middle managers and expect them to do the same with their teams. When leaders show genuine interest in their people's growth and mobility, engagement, performance, and loyalty improve.
4. Align rewards with expanded scope and enterprise impact
Middle managers have always been accountable for team performance. What has changed in flatter organizations is the scale and complexity of that accountability.
If you have expanded spans of control, increased cross-functional influence, and raised expectations around coaching, change leadership, and AI adoption, your reward structures should reflect that broader remit.
Review how bonus criteria and performance evaluations are weighted. Do they meaningfully account for team development, cross-functional collaboration, successful change adoption, and sustained engagement? Or are they still anchored primarily in short-term, transactional metrics?
Compensation and recognition systems shape behavior. If you want middle managers to operate as enterprise leaders rather than high-level individual contributors, you need to reinforce that shift with incentives. This doesn’t require dramatic pay increases; it requires realignment. Even modest adjustments in weighting, bonus opportunity, or recognition criteria can send a powerful signal that expanded leadership responsibility is understood and valued.
5. Invest in leadership development
Many of today’s senior executives benefited from significant development early in their careers through formal LDP programs, MBAs, and full weeks in leadership workshops wrestling with strategy, finance, and people challenges. Those experiences shaped how you lead today.
Middle managers have been given a broader scope without comparable investment over the last three to five years. They have the aptitude and the will, but not always the experience or tools required for expanded, more strategic roles.
Assuming the next generation of leaders can operate at a similar level without comparable learning and development is unrealistic. Senior leaders must advocate for this investment, especially when budgets tighten. If leadership development is the first thing cut, the signal is clear: learning and growth are optional. Your long-term leadership pipeline is built in the middle. If you want strong VPs three to five years from now, you have to develop strong Directors and Senior Managers today.
A Leadership Choice Within Your Control
You chose to flatten the organization for good reasons. Optimizing that structure takes intention and thoughtful prioritization. It requires you to make a few hard trade-offs, advocate for the right investments, and be disciplined about what you add to and subtract from leaders’ plates.
Middle-level leaders have an outsized impact on customer satisfaction, revenue growth, employee engagement scores, and even how the CEO and the company are rated overall. I have seen meaningful gains in those metrics when middle managers are clear on their roles, empowered to make decisions, and given the bandwidth to grow their leadership skills. The difference shows up in how teams perform and how people feel about working there.
This is not complicated work, but it does require focus and follow-through at the top. These are practical ways to build leadership capacity, and they are within your control.
If you want to explore practical ways to rebuild leadership capacity in the middle, reach out at colleen@cdbglobalpartners.com or message me directly on LinkedIn
Wishing you inspiration, courage, and results on your leadership journey!
Colleen
