We didn't get worse managers. We built a worse job.

Why the middle, not your strategy, is where execution actually lives or dies.

A recent piece in Inc. made a claim worth sitting with: the biggest leadership risk in 2026 is not strategy and not execution. It is your managers. Specifically, how disengaged they have become and how little support they get from the people above them. The number the piece leaned on is hard to wave away. Gallup's 2025 global workplace data put disengagement at roughly, and when you follow that thread, it keeps ending up in the same place, the middle of the organization.

I agree with where the trail leads. I would just put the blame somewhere different.

We did not suddenly get a worse generation of managers. We built a worse job and kept handing it to good people.

The middle is the execution layer

Strategy is written at the top. Work happens at the front line. The middle is the layer where one becomes the other. A manager takes a sentence from a leadership offsite, "we're moving upmarket," "we're tightening retention," and turns it into who does what, by when, measured how. That translation is the actual moment strategy becomes execution or quietly dies. No other layer does it.

So when execution slips, the middle is where it shows up first. Not because managers are the weak link, but because they are the load-bearing one.

We kept the authority and handed down the accountability

Here is the trap. We hold managers accountable for outcomes, the number, the launch, the retention rate. Then we give them almost none of the authority required to move those outcomes. They cannot reset priorities, that comes from above. They cannot make the call without three approvals. They inherit five top priorities and are told all five are critical. They are measured on delivery and handed a role built for coordination.

That is not a problem you fix with a coaching workshop. It is a structural mismatch. Accountability without authority is not a leadership role. It is a pressure position, and we act surprised when the people in it disengage.

"Support" is structure, not encouragement

When the data says managers need more support, it is easy to hear that as the softer things: recognition, empathy, a better one-on-one template. Those matter. They are not what is breaking.

What breaks is structural, and so is the fix. Decision rights, written down, so a manager knows what they can settle without escalating. A real operating cadence, so priorities get revisited instead of stacked. A short list of what actually matters this quarter, so "everything is urgent" stops being the operating model. Those are not perks. They are the difference between a manager who can execute and one who is just absorbing pressure and passing it downward.

Give a manager clarity and decision rights and you do not have to motivate them much. The job becomes doable, and doable work is the most underrated source of engagement there is.

What this means if you lead the leaders

If your managers look disengaged, the instinct is to fix the managers: training, new hires, a culture initiative. Sometimes that is right. More often, the managers are an accurate readout of the job you designed.

So before you conclude you have a manager problem, look at the role itself. Count the priorities you have handed the middle. Count the decisions that have to climb past them. Count how many of your strategic intentions arrived as a slide and never as an owner, a date, and a definition of done. That count is your real execution risk, and it is not a people problem. It is an architecture problem, and architecture is something leaders can change.

The good news is simple. You cannot quickly install a better generation of managers. You can, this quarter, rebuild the job so the ones you have can do it.

More to come.