Few top- or middle-level managers fully understand the strategic roles described here. How many top managers have articulated their expectations along these lines to middle management? For reengineering to pay off, top managers need to analyze the changed role of middle management and begin to develop it within the organization. Interventions with middle managers can clarify expectations and encourage appropriate behaviors

Delayering should be accompanied by reorganizing according to a process-oriented, horizontal logic. Organizational boundaries are becoming increasingly fuzzy as networks of suppliers, customers, and competitors are formed to cope with enormously complex and demanding circumstances. Organizations want to capture the influence of middle managers who relate to the market and technological environments. In order to open up the organization to environmental influence, boundary-spanning middle managers should become the owners of product development, order fulfillment, and other key business processes.

The need for power shifts--from functional to process leadership, for example--is often lost on those considering or undergoing a reengineering effort. Sometimes, senior managers expect middle managers to take charge of a process but give them very little real authority. Without the ability to try new things, train subordinates, probe new territories, and the like, middle managers quickly become frustrated and cynical about top management's intent. "Slack" has become a dirty word, but the flexibility, experimentation, and learning which is the goal of horizontal organization does require resources.