Changes in strategy are where being stuck in “middle management” feels the most unpleasant. You may have very little ability to push back on the changes to strategy coming from above, and even when you’ve promised your team that certain projects will happen, you sometimes have to pull back on that promise because of unexpected changes. This makes the team unhappy, and they complain to you. Because you have no ability to do much about it, you can feel like it exposes you as powerless, and your team might feel that they’re being treated not as humans, but as cogs in the corporate machine.
