The Rise of the Middle Manager as Culture Keeper

They’re not in the boardroom.
They’re not invited to the leadership offsite.
And they’re almost never at the industry conferences where big-name speakers talk about “throwing the ladder down.”

Which is a shame - because these are exactly the people who should be there.

The ones running entire businesses.
Keeping the tills ringing.
Leading the team.
Delivering the guest experience.
Staying on top of training, marketing, safety, finances, standards - and somehow still having the emotional bandwidth to care.

And one level up - the area managers, the ops leaders - are often stretched even thinner.
Responsible for ten, twenty sites at a time.
Fixing the gaps. Supporting the people. Shielding their teams from the chaos above.

Yet unless they have an exceptional board level sponsor, they’re invisible at the table where change is discussed.
And the conferences? Without them, they often become echo chambers - full of “future of leadership” panels that forget who’s already doing the real leading.

But what if they’re not stuck in the middle?

What if they’re standing right at the centre?

Middle and regional managers are the culture keepers of this industry.

They lead in every direction - up, down, across.
They translate vision into reality.
They model values when no one’s watching.
And they carry both the commercial pressure and the human one.

When culture is done well, it’s usually because someone in the middle made it real.

And when we invest in them?

Not just with more reporting tools or targets - but with development, coaching, community and belief?

We grow businesses that lead from the centre, not just the top.
We create a pipeline of deeply experienced, emotionally intelligent future board members.
We keep people - because they feel seen.
We lift standards -because the people running the show feel lifted too. And the ripple effect on their teams beneath them – huge!

 Time to look again.

At the managers who are NFI (Not F*ing Invited) to influence decisions.
At the leaders whose title doesn’t reflect the scale of what they do.
At the ops teams who hold everything up while no one’s looking.

Many of them are already better leaders than those sitting in the boardroom.

The future isn’t only about what’s near the top of the ladder - it’s about who’s standing at the centre, holding it steady.