Middle Managers Are Essential to Your Cultural Strategy

by Pamela Coleman

June 2026

In McKinsey’s The State of Organizations 2026 report, 56 percent of executives say they are clear about their organization's must-win battles, but clarity drops sharply at lower levels — to 44 percent of senior managers and just 27 percent of middle managers. Middle managers are critical to achieving cultural goals, and I assume a cohesive culture is one of your must-win battles. These managers are your largest leadership group, have direct day-to-day interaction with employees, and executives cannot achieve their goals without them.

As an executive, I frequently participated in two-day strategic planning sessions. We would hash things out, prioritize major projects, evaluate resources, assess risks, and put together a final plan. We all benefited from these tough but rewarding sessions. We took pains to cascade the details to ensure the directors fully understood, knowing they would be responsible for execution. Still, we were not always able to include the entire management team, so despite our investments in transparency, cascading, and inclusion, we may have unintentionally failed the middle tier. 

To build a culture worthy of exaltation and a beaming elevator speech, leaders must develop a plan and commit to its effective rollout. Cultural coherence depends on firmly establishing an identity and clearly communicating to the entire workforce how the organization will operate. It is great if executives embrace standards for communication, behavior, and planning, but these standards must be modeled and nurtured through ongoing communication and training.

Even with the best planning, a gap between executive and middle-management clarity can persist, and I once saw how badly it can go when nothing is done to close that gap. Years ago, a privately held brokerage firm hired me to help them put together an organizational development plan. I met with the CEO to gain a deep understanding of their vision, and culture was central to it. Over a few weeks, through meetings with key leaders, we compiled a cultural vision, validated it against the strategic vision, and selected a set of attributes to establish the framework for a cultural strategy. Working independently with the Human Resources leader, we evaluated the organization's status against each attribute to identify organizational development needs.

The day came. We were aligned and ready to roll out the culture and accompanying plans across the entire organization. The team reviewed the deck I put together, and a meeting for the broader team was scheduled. When the time came, however, the CEO and their team did not attend. I was the consultant, an outsider, so the lack of support from the leadership ranks left the work hollow for the team. The presentation meetings felt lackluster, and the management tier disengaged because the leadership team was not there to support the project. The work was done, and the leadership team had a clear understanding of the why and the what. But in the face of lackluster support, the project stalled. I knew that without manager buy-in, nothing would change.

The 27 percent cited by McKinsey is not an abstraction. It happens when a sound cultural strategy fails to reach the people meant to carry it. When you roll out your next cultural initiative, will your middle managers be in the proverbial room — or will they be left in the dark?