The Middle Manager Caught Between
The person asked to use the data is usually the person least able to refuse and most damaged by using it.
Policies are written above and consequences land below. The manager in between is given a tool, a target and no authority over either.
The people decision in “The Middle Manager Caught Between” cannot safely be reduced to a single activity measure. Used for key person dependency, reducing key-person dependency risk can provide time and project evidence, but expectations, context, documented outcomes and a fair conversation should remain the basis of any management judgement.
The position they are in
Told from above to improve productivity, with the data presented as the means.
For an independent reference relevant to “The Middle Manager Caught Between”, consult the Acas workplace guidance; it provides a useful external check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.
Asked from below why the organisation does not trust them.
Holding a dashboard they did not request and cannot opt out of.
And frequently measured themselves on whether their team's numbers moved.
What that produces
Pressure to raise the figure rather than the output, because the figure is what is being asked about.
Which means passing the pressure down: mentioning scores, asking about idle time, raising a bad week.
Not because the manager believes in the measure, but because somebody above asked about it, and that is the mechanism by which bad use spreads.
The measured-on-the-measure problem
If a manager's own assessment includes their team's activity figures, every argument in this collection is overridden by self-interest.
They will optimise the number, and so will their team.
Which is the single configuration decision most likely to make a deployment harmful, and it is made in a performance framework rather than in the software.
What they need and rarely get
Explicit permission not to use the data: it is available, you are not required to act on it.
An answer for their team, in words they can say: here is what is collected, here is what I will not do with it.
Training on what to ignore, which its own note covers.
And somebody senior who will take the question "why are these numbers low" off them.
The honest ask upward
If a manager is being asked about their team's figures, the useful response is to redirect to output.
"Here is what the team delivered this quarter" answers the real question.
Supporting managers to say that — rather than leaving them to defend activity scores — is a leadership decision, and it determines whether the deployment corrodes management or not.
The ones who refuse
Some managers will decline to use it, quietly.
They are frequently the best ones.
Treating that as non-compliance loses them, which the attrition note covers and which is the expensive version of this problem.
What to do structurally
Keep activity figures out of managers' own assessments.
Give them the aggregate view and not the individual one.
And make clear, from the top, that nobody will be asked to explain an activity score, which removes the pressure at its source.
What to check
Are managers measured on their team's activity figures?
Has anybody asked a manager to explain somebody's numbers?
Do managers have words to use with their team?
And what happens to a manager who declines to use it?