Such activities are highly valuable, but they don’t remove the need for the “transmission belts” of the organization, which is our MIT colleague Paul Osterman’s excellent image of middle managers. These people solve small problems, escalate large ones, interpret and clarify communications both upward and downward, negotiate and discuss with their peers, and exercise their social skills in many other ways. The old definition of a great lawyer is one who makes problems go away before they show up in court. Really good managers are much the same; they make the transmission of an organization work
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