In the era of America’s “Great Flattening,” one longtime executive still believes that middle management has an important role to play.
Speaking in a Monday episode of Yahoo Finance’s “Opening Bid” podcast, Jamba Juice’s former CEO, James D. White, said companies should not lose sight of the fact that humans and company culture drive bottom-line growth.
And White said that middle managers are crucial for driving a good company culture.
“It’s really hard to drive culture into an organization if you’re not focused on the middle management of the organization,” he told host Brian Sozzi.
White said one reason for this is because most workers report to middle management.
“If that part of the organization doesn’t have the tools, hasn’t bought into the mission and vision, and they’re not being appropriately rewarded or invested in, you don’t have the best chance of getting that message into the heart of the organization,” White said.
White was the CEO of Jamba Juice from 2008 to 2016 and has held executive roles in Gillette, Coca-Cola, and Nestlé Purina. He now sits on the board of directors for several consumer companies, including Cava Group and Simply Good Foods.
White’s advice contrasts with that of other executives, who have sworn by a flat company hierarchy.
In recent years, companies like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Intel, and Google have all slashed their middle management head count in the name of efficiency. But it’s not just Big Tech: retail giants like Walmart have followed suit.
And in November, Keily Blair, the CEO of OnlyFans, said her company was making $7 billion in annual revenue with a staff count of only 42.
She said her company thrives from having only “incredibly senior talent” and “incredibly hungry junior talent.”
“We do not have that sort of squidgy layer of middle management in the middle, because nobody’s ever had a really good middle manager in my experience,” Blair said in the interview during a Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon.
