Employees Work in the Messy Middle

Nathan Bricklin
8 minutes ago
4 min read

The Workday During Change, Part 2

One of the phrases employees hear most often during a major change is, “We’re still working through the details.” Usually that is true, and often it is the only honest answer available.

Large changes involve too many dependencies to have every question resolved on the day they are announced. The complication is that employees rarely get to wait for the details before continuing the work.

Deadlines remain in place, customers still need answers, and decisions still have to be made while the organization is moving from one way of operating to another. For a period of time, employees are often working inside both versions at once. The new structure is official, but many of the relationships and processes that made the old one function are still carrying much of the load.

That period is sometimes described as the messy middle, which can make it sound like an awkward but brief stage between two more stable points. In a large organization, it can last for months. Roles may have changed while the work attached to them has not fully moved. New leaders may be responsible for areas they are still learning, while former leaders continue to be pulled into conversations because they hold the history and relationships everyone depends on.

Employees become responsible for interpreting the space between what has been announced and what is actually possible. They may receive a new set of priorities while still being held to commitments made under the old ones. A team may be told that another group now owns part of its work, only to discover that the receiving group does not yet have the capacity, access, or context to take it on. Rather than allow the work to fail, people keep doing parts of their former jobs while trying to establish the new arrangement.

This is one reason major change can create more work before it creates less. Employees attend meetings connected to both the old and new organization because nobody wants an important dependency to be missed, and they may maintain information in more than one place because neither source is fully reliable yet.

Managers spend time translating broad direction into local decisions, then revisit those decisions as new information arrives.

Much of that effort is difficult to see from the top of the organization because employees are usually trying to absorb the disruption rather than advertise it. They make an extra call, keep someone copied on a message, or quietly complete a task that no longer appears in their formal responsibilities. The output continues, which can make the transition look more settled than it is.

There is a meaningful difference between working through uncertainty in an organization that expected the transition to be difficult and working through it in one that seems surprised every time another gap appears.

When leaders anticipate that responsibilities, relationships, and processes will not all move at the same speed, they are more likely to stay close to the work and create practical ways for employees and managers to surface what is getting stuck. The uncertainty may remain, but people are not left to solve every part of it privately.

I saw this during return-to-office planning, when an enterprise direction had to be translated across businesses, markets, buildings, and teams operating under very different conditions. The policy was only one part of the change. Employees and managers were also working through how meetings would function, which services needed to be available, how teams would coordinate across locations, and what to do when the workplace or technology did not yet support the new expectations consistently.

There was no single moment when the old way of working ended and the new one began. Some teams changed quickly, while others continued relying on practices that had developed over several years.

Local leaders made reasonable adjustments for their employees and business needs, but those adjustments also meant that the same enterprise change could feel quite different depending on where someone worked or who led the team.

Leaders can underestimate how much organizational knowledge employees contribute during a transition. People remember why a process was created, which stakeholder needs to be involved before a decision is made, and where a seemingly small change is likely to create a problem elsewhere.

When reporting lines move or experienced employees leave, knowledge does not automatically transfer to the new structure.

The employees who remain often become the bridge. They explain the history to new leaders, reconnect teams that no longer sit together, and keep old relationships active until new ones become dependable. That work is valuable, but it can also leave people carrying responsibilities that were never formally acknowledged and may not have a clear endpoint.

Leaders still have to move before every detail is resolved. The messy middle needs to be managed as a real operating environment, with enough clarity for people to make decisions and a dependable way to raise problems when the formal design does not yet support the work.

Eventually the new organization begins to feel more normal, although it rarely looks exactly like the model that was originally presented.

By then, many of the habits, relationships, and informal fixes developed during the transition may already be shaping how the company actually operates.

Nathan Bricklin

Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience

Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale.

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