Middle Manager
Work in and on the business with defined and undefined problems
Glass Ceiling
The overlooked pressures of middle management
Principle: Build a strategy that empowers decision-making.
Glass Ceiling: Promoted for past success as a team leader, but lack the strategic thinking to organise, prioritise, and delegate across multiple missions. You fall back into doing the work yourself instead of enabling others, leaving your own priorities neglected and working unsustainable hours.
Principle: Build a culture that epitomises the pursuit of excellence.
Glass Ceiling: Thrown into a political arena for the first time, you struggle to influence senior leaders or push back on poor decisions. Unable to coach or develop your team leaders effectively, you reinforce the very pitfalls you once experienced, creating frustration and disengagement below them.
Principle: Build operational structures that enable swift execution.
Glass Ceiling: Lacking the skills to align competing priorities or translate shifting demands into clear processes, you leave teams unclear on direction. Vague tasks, constant change, and weak management reporting trap you in firefighting mode, caught between the demands of senior leaders and the needs of your teams.
These follow The Peter Principle, represented below: People are promoted based on their success in previous roles until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one role do not necessarily transfer to another.
If this sounds familiar, let’s explore how to break through. Start a conversation.
“Kenny has a natural ability to help managers develop skills at a fast pace and work more productively with others. He has given me the confidence to believe in myself and work with other people to achieve a positive outcome.”
Nicola McDonald
Tax Transformation Project Manager, Astra Zeneca
Mission Ready
Translate strategy. Empower Teams. Orchestrate delivery.
Principle: Build a strategy that empowers decision-making.
Mission Ready: Distils company strategy into clear departmental objectives and team-level KPIs, turning abstractions into actions. Sets a cadence for weekly/monthly prioritisation. Team leaders can make decisions with confidence, and without escalation. Coaches decision quality (assumptions, evidence, options, etc) and uses scenario planning to keep delivery resilient under changing demands.
Principle: Build a culture that epitomises the pursuit of excellence.
Mission Ready: Grows team leaders into coaches, not doers, setting expectations, giving meaningful feedback, and developing autonomy. Creates a challenge-rich environment where ideas and decisions can be tested without ego, upwards and downwards. Influences across the political arena by building credibility, aligning incentives, and presenting evidence-led cases that move senior decisions.
Principle: Build operational structures that enable swift execution.
Mission Ready: Runs a tight ship. Clear roles (RACI), crisp handoffs, dependency and an agreed escalation path, so work flows without the middle manager becoming the bottleneck. Uses management reporting as a feedback loop to senior leaders by confirming or refuting decisions and refining strategy. Orchestrates delivery across teams so priorities stay stable and outcomes compound.
These principles and their corresponding actions enable individuals, teams & organisations to access flow, the sense of effortless progress, everything working as it should when it should. Below is a simplified example of how leadership roles should interconnect:
“I worked with Kenny in my first role, and again more recently. I have gained immense value from his coaching. Kenny’s case studies on leadership & behaviour are also brimming with insights, and easy to apply to daily challenges.”
Aislinn Nicol
CFO, Turtl
Identify your blindspots
What could you, your team, or organisation achieve if your invisible barriers just disappeared?
I work exclusively with highly motivated individuals and teams who’ve hit a glass ceiling, are aware they’ve hit a glass ceiling and unable to move forward. If this describes your situation then lets discuss your options.
“The world we created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it”
Albert Einstein
Theoretical Physicist & Nobel Laureate
Middle Manager
Work in and on the business with defined and undefined problems
Glass Ceiling
The overlooked pressures of middle management
-
Principle: Build a strategy that empowers decision-making.
Glass Ceiling: Promoted for past success as a team leader, but lack the strategic thinking to organise, prioritise, and delegate across multiple missions. You fall back into doing the work yourself instead of enabling others, leaving your own priorities neglected and working unsustainable hours.
-
Principle: Build a culture that epitomises the pursuit of excellence.
Glass Ceiling: Thrown into a political arena for the first time, you struggle to influence senior leaders or push back on poor decisions. Unable to coach or develop your team leaders effectively, you reinforce the very pitfalls you once experienced, creating frustration and disengagement below them.
-
Principle: Build operational structures that enable swift execution.
Glass Ceiling: Lacking the skills to align competing priorities or translate shifting demands into clear processes, you leave teams unclear on direction. Vague tasks, constant change, and weak management reporting trap you in firefighting mode, caught between the demands of senior leaders and the needs of your teams.
These follow The Peter Principle, represented below: People are promoted based on their success in previous roles until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one role do not necessarily transfer to another.
If this sounds familiar, let’s explore how to break through. Start a conversation.
-
with others. He has given me the confidence to believe in myself and work with other people to achieve a positive outcome.”
Nicola McDonald
Tax Transformation Project Manager, Astra Zeneca
Mission Ready
Translate strategy. Empower Teams. Orchestrate delivery.
-
Principle: Build a strategy that empowers decision-making.
Mission Ready: Distils company strategy into clear departmental objectives and team-level KPIs, turning abstractions into actions. Sets a cadence for weekly/monthly prioritisation. Team leaders can make decisions with confidence, and without escalation. Coaches decision quality (assumptions, evidence, options, etc) and uses scenario planning to keep delivery resilient under changing demands.
-
Principle: Build a culture that epitomises the pursuit of excellence.
Mission Ready: Grows team leaders into coaches, not doers, setting expectations, giving meaningful feedback, and developing autonomy. Creates a challenge-rich environment where ideas and decisions can be tested without ego, upwards and downwards. Influences across the political arena by building credibility, aligning incentives, and presenting evidence-led cases that move senior decisions.
-
Principle: Build operational structures that enable swift execution.
Mission Ready: Runs a tight ship. Clear roles (RACI), crisp handoffs, dependency and an agreed escalation path, so work flows without the middle manager becoming the bottleneck. Uses management reporting as a feedback loop to senior leaders by confirming or refuting decisions and refining strategy. Orchestrates delivery across teams so priorities stay stable and outcomes compound.
These principles and their corresponding actions enable individuals, teams & organisations to access flow, the sense of effortless progress, everything working as it should when it should. Below is a simplified example of how leadership roles should interconnect:
-
his coaching. Kenny’s case studies on leadership & behaviour are also brimming with insights, and easy to apply to daily challenges.”
Aislinn Nicol
CFO, Turtl
Identify blindspots
What could you, your team, or organisation achieve if your invisible barriers just disappeared?
I work exclusively with highly motivated individuals and teams who’ve hit a glass ceiling, are aware they’ve hit a glass ceiling and unable to move forward. If this describes your situation then lets discuss your options.
“The world we created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it”
Albert Einstein
Theoretical Physicist & Nobel Laureate