Q6 - Kevin Kohls

Q6. Tell us more about The Conflicted Middle.

It’s a book about why middle management seems so resistance to change, and what can be done to overcome that resistance. At GM, middle management was called the Frozen Middle. Senior leadership is frustrated that their ideas are not being implemented, and outside consultants feel like their banging their heads against a brick wall trying to implement change. Having been in middle management for most of my career at GM, I lived within the frozen middle. Originally, I had the same viewpoint – it’s a cultural thing, and you’ll never be able to change it. That perspective changed when I took the Jonah program. I realized that middle management was behaving logically! As in a cloud or a CRT, it was the assumptions and policies that they were operating under that was causing this resistance to change. 

What was shocking to me about the Jonah course was that my scope of influence was much larger than I originally thought. When it came to proposing a change to middle managers, I originally thought, “They’ll never change, so why bother.” Now I want to understand what their conflicts – why are they choosing not to adopt a new program when there are indications it will help. You soon come up with a fairly common list of logical objections. Overcoming these objections in your sales pitch is a critical aspect of securing their support and reducing the number of obstacles that will have to be overcome. 

So the book describes the conflicts the middle management faces, and why I now look at them as the Conflicted Middle vs. the Frozen Middle. For those with a TOC background, there will be little that is new. But I am writing more for the few middle managers out there who would like to become change agents in their organizations.