Managers as Functions of Their System
The last post in this series ended with a line I wanted to come back to: managers - especially first-line managers in more hierarchical orgs - are not always empowered to change the systems they're operating in. They're functions of those systems too, and I think that changes how the earlier posts about curiosity and framing land.
When I was an IC and brought something to my manager - a real problem, well-framed, with a proposed solution - and nothing happened, I assumed my manager didn't care. Or didn't get it. Or wasn't good at the job. Sometimes that was true, but a lot of the time, what was actually happening was that my manager had tried to move it forward and got blocked by someone above them with different priorities. I did everything right - found the issue, framed it with a solution, built the trust the last post talked about - and the response was some version of "I hear you, I'm trying." At the time it felt like a non-answer, but looking back, I think it was usually an honest one.
From the manager side, I've also been the person saying "I hear you, I'm trying" and meaning it. There's a specific frustration that comes from knowing your team is right about something, advocating for it upward, and getting told it's not a priority right now. You go back to your team and you have to be honest about the situation without making them feel like their work doesn't matter, and there's no clean way to do that.
The job of a first-line manager involves translating in both directions. You're taking the big business goals from above and turning them into something your team can actually work on. And you're taking what your team is finding - the problems, the solutions, the things they're digging into - and making the case upward in terms that the people above you care about. When both directions are working, things move. When one gets blocked, everything gets harder.
Managing up is its own skill. The goal is making sure the people above you understand - in their terms, aligned with their priorities - what the benefits and risks are of both action and inaction. You're making a case for why the thing your team found matters to the goals everyone already agreed on, not just surfacing the problem. Sometimes you make that case well and the answer is still no. Resources are finite, and not everything that matters can happen right now.
At that point, you have to manage down honestly. Sometimes that means telling your team "I fought for this and we're not getting it right now, but I haven't dropped it." Sometimes it means helping them redirect their energy somewhere it can make an impact within the current constraints. Saying no is uncomfortable, but both of those are better than pretending the problem doesn't exist.
This gets harder in more hierarchical organizations because each layer up has already committed most of the available space. The VP has priorities set by the executive team. The director has priorities set by the VP. By the time you get to the first-line manager, the space for independent decisions about what to prioritize is small. A first-line manager usually can't unilaterally decide to staff a project or change a team's direction, but they can advocate, build the case over time, find ways to make progress within their constraints, and be honest with their team about what's happening and why.
From the IC side, understanding this shifts the question from "why won't my manager fix this" to "what's actually preventing this from getting fixed." The first is about a person, and the second is about a system. Systems are harder to change than individuals, but they're not permanent.
I've seen systems change, though not often and not quickly. Usually it takes someone at the right level deciding the current approach isn't working and being willing to push for something different. Sometimes that's a senior leader who finally listens to what's been escalated for months. Sometimes it's a first-line manager who finds a way to demonstrate value through a small win that proves the point. It's worth trying, because the alternative - deciding the system is immovable and checking out - leads back to the same cycle.
This post is about the people in the middle - the managers trying to protect and direct their team's energy within systems they didn't design and can't easily change.