From manager coach to decision owner : fixing a strategic drift
You did not promote your best managers so they could run group therapy sessions. You promoted them so the role of manager would anchor decision making close to the work, where information is freshest and the enterprise actually creates value. When the authority of line managers is diluted into endless facilitation, companies pay for leadership and receive moderation.
Over the last years, many management programs have glorified the manager as coach, mediator, and well being ambassador. This shift had advantages for engagement in the short term, yet it quietly stripped managerial layers of the power that allows them to arbitrate priorities, allocate resources, and own operational challenges. The paradox is brutal for general managers who now see time spent on alignment rituals explode while the minimum needed for real decisions at the right level keeps shrinking.
Look at your own organisation chart and ignore the boxes for a moment. The real contribution of managers as decision makers is visible only if you map who can say yes, who can say no, and who can stop harmful work before it hits customers. If your managers need to search for approval on every exception, they are not managing, they are escalating, and the enterprise is paying twice for the same decision making.
The drift started with good intentions about modern management and psychological safety. HR functions pushed managerial models where listening, coaching, and collective intelligence were positioned as essential skills, while the uncomfortable part of authority was quietly removed from the job description. In many companies, this change allows senior leaders to feel benevolent, but it leaves middle managers carrying accountability without the corresponding power.
As a general manager, you must take this personally because it is your P&L that absorbs the cost. When managerial decision rights are unclear, time spent in meetings grows, tools multiply, and decisions migrate upwards, clogging your own agenda with topics that should be settled two levels below. The result is slower decision making, frustrated managers, and an enterprise where the loudest voice wins instead of the closest to the facts.
Redefining the mandate : what you must formally give back to managers
If you want managers to behave as decision makers, you must rewrite their mandate in operational terms. Their scope should be defined not by generic management competencies, but by a concrete list of decisions they own end to end. Without this clarity, even talented managers with strong skills will default to consensus seeking and upward delegation.
Start with budget, because money reveals real power in any enterprise. Give each manager a discretionary envelope, even modest, that allows them to act within minutes on small operational challenges instead of waiting weeks for central approval. In one industrial services company I advised, granting frontline managers a discretionary budget of 5 000 euros per quarter for customer recovery and process fixes cut average incident resolution time from 10 days to 4 days and reduced churn on affected accounts by 18 % within a year; this anonymised case is based on internal client data collected between 2019 and 2021.
Next, address recruitment and team composition, which sit at the heart of managerial work. A manager who cannot decide who joins or leaves their team is a coordinator, not a leader, and this weakens local ownership of decisions at its core. Grant them autonomy to select candidates within a clear framework, and hold them to account for performance and engagement outcomes rather than for following every HR process to the letter.
Then, formalise a right of veto on processes that slow down execution. The best performing companies I see allow frontline managers to flag any procedure that adds more than ten minutes of useless work per day for their team, and to request a rapid review. This simple mechanism signals that managerial judgment on operational reality is essential, and it aligns the manager’s role with continuous improvement instead of passive compliance.
Finally, equip managers with decision making tools that match their mandate. A concise three question frame for urgent arbitrages, such as: “Is this decision reversible within 30 days?”, “What is the worst credible downside if we act now?”, and “Who must be informed or involved before we move?”, allows them to separate reversible from irreversible choices and to act faster with less anxiety. When you combine clear decision rights, practical tools, and explicit expectations, managerial authority stops being a slogan and becomes a measurable management asset.
The test of silence : measuring whether your managers still have power
There is a simple diagnostic you can run on your next executive committee. Ask each director to name the last unpopular decision taken by one of their managers, and to date it precisely in time. If a manager has not taken a visible, contested decision in the last six months, they probably no longer hold enough power to fulfil their responsibility as a decision owner.
Unpopular does not mean arbitrary or unfair, it means a choice where managerial responsibility overrode local motivations or short term comfort. It might be reallocating work from a senior profile to a junior, cancelling a pet project, or refusing a client request that would damage margins, and these are the moments where real management happens. When such decisions disappear from the narrative, you can be sure that decision making has migrated upwards or sideways into committees.
Track the time spent by managers in meetings where they do not own the final call. In several companies I advise, middle managers report spending more than 60 % of their week in alignment rituals, while the minimum of focused time on their team and customers keeps eroding. This imbalance kills the advantages of proximity and turns managers into relay stations for PowerPoint slides.
As a general manager, you should also examine the account of decisions that are formally attributed to “the organisation” or “the project” rather than to a named manager. When no one can say who decided, you are not facing a collective intelligence success, you are facing a governance failure disguised as collaboration. The healthiest enterprises I know maintain a clear ledger of who owns which type of decision, and they treat the absence of a named owner as a red flag; a simple decision ledger entry might include the decision title, date, accountable manager, consulted stakeholders, and review date.
Finally, look at how your culture treats managerial courage over the long term. If managers who enforce standards or challenge unrealistic demands are quietly sidelined, while those who avoid conflict are promoted, their decision authority will continue to erode regardless of any leadership seminar. To reverse this, make visible cases where a manager took a tough stance that protected strategy or values, and link these stories to career progression, as suggested in this analysis on turning rejection into a strategic asset for GMs available through the strategic use of rejection decisions.
Structuring managerial power : practices from high engagement organisations
Some organisations manage to keep managers highly engaged while reinforcing their authority. These enterprises treat managerial power as a designed system, not as an emergent property of personalities or historical habits. They engineer management so that decision making is both distributed and accountable, and they measure the impact with hard data, not slogans.
In these companies, the managerial job description starts with decisions, not activities. For each level, they list the top ten recurring decisions, the tools available to support them, and the boundaries within which managers can act without escalation, which makes the advantages of clarity immediately tangible. This approach transforms vague expectations about leadership into an essential operating manual for managers.
They also invest in developing the specific skills that connect emotional intelligence with analytical rigor. Managers learn to read weak signals in their team while using data dashboards to validate intuitions, and this combination allows them to arbitrate faster with less bias. The manager’s role as a decision maker becomes a professional craft, where time spent on coaching is directly linked to better decisions, not to avoiding them.
Another common practice is to institutionalise regular, high quality conversations between general managers and their managers of managers. Rather than reviewing only KPIs, they explore three recurring dialogues about mandate, support, and constraints, as outlined in this resource on structuring conversations with managers of managers. These exchanges allow you to take into account real field challenges and to adjust managerial scope before disengagement sets in.
Finally, high engagement companies treat management as a discipline that people must learn continuously, not as a reward for technical excellence. They encourage managers to search for peer practices, to compare how different enterprises structure authority, and to reflect on their own motivations for taking or avoiding decisions. When you, as a general manager, frame managerial power as an essential asset to be grown and protected, you send a clear signal that the role of manager is about owning decisions, not just facilitating conversations.
Key figures on managerial power and engagement
- Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 report indicates that manager engagement dropped from roughly 31 % to 22 % over a three year period in many regions, a nine point fall that directly weakens local decision ownership and increases the risk of slow or inconsistent decision making; figures are drawn from Gallup’s 2021–2023 global workplace reports.
- Leadership consultancy DDI, in its Global Leadership Forecast 2023, observes that flatter organisational structures are spreading across large companies, which reduces hierarchical layers but often leaves decision rights undefined, creating new challenges for middle management clarity; data is based on DDI’s multi-year leadership surveys.
- Culture RH’s 2022 analyses on feedback practices highlight that feedback has become more horizontal and frequent, while key strategic decisions remain concentrated at the top, a paradox that can leave managers accountable for outcomes without the corresponding power; these findings come from Culture RH’s dossiers on feedback culture and managerial practices.
- Talenco’s Baromètre des compétences managériales 2022 identifies emotional intelligence combined with AI literacy as an emerging core skill set, which allows managers to use digital tools to support faster, more informed decision making rather than to justify delays; results are based on Talenco’s survey of managerial competencies in 2022.
References
- Gallup – State of the Global Workplace 2021, 2022, 2023 reports on manager engagement.
- DDI – Global Leadership Forecast 2023 and related leadership trends analyses.
- Culture RH – 2022 dossiers on feedback culture and managerial practices.
- Talenco – Baromètre des compétences managériales 2022.