In medieval times, there was a mythical land of Cockaigne in popular culture that served as a fantasy for the hungry masses. In this land, physical comforts were always available, and the harshness of life was banished. Plentiful food and drink was a pleasant thing for a starving peasant to contemplate as she stared at her thin broth in a cold hut in darkest winter.

Container Solutions is growing fast. This is good news! But when a company becomes this large—we are now more than 100 people, and adding more every week—we can no longer simply stop by each others’ desks for a quick check-in. Especially when those desks are spread out across seven different countries, and two continents!

I am going to be very honest right now: I wrote this blog a year ago. It was during a time when members of my own team were driving me mad with their seemingly insatiable obsession with details. However, I couldn’t say exactly why they were driving me mad. I only knew that they were. What was happening?

This post is part of a three-part series on middle managers and Cloud Native transformation. Here are parts one and two.

In the second part of this series we looked at how mid-level managers may not wholly function as a force for good within your organisation, and the ways that this ‘frozen middle’ may actually be impeding progress. The power they hold over an initiative’s success often goes unrecognised, but it does exist and can be used to.

This post is part of a three-part series on middle managers and Cloud Native transformation. Here are parts two and three.

Being a middle manager is a tough gig.