You’re not just watching the dance. You’re on the floor, stepping on toes. The question is: Are you willing to admit it?

Spend five minutes with an exec team, and odds are you’ll hear some version of:

“Our middle management layer isn’t strong enough.”

“They don’t think like owners.”

“They’re not proactive.”

Sure. That might be true. But here’s the uncomfortable follow-up: Who built this team?

You Reap What You Sow

You’re so frustrated with them. Maybe they’re struggling to make tough calls, to align execution with strategy, to think beyond Jira boards and daily standups. But all those people didn’t emerge from the mist. They were interviewed, onboarded, promoted, and coached (or not) under your watch. Every person in that org is the result of compounding leadership decisions made over quarters, maybe years. It wasn’t fate. It was your system working as designed.

If you’re looking at your org like a homeowner who just discovered the house has a fragile foundation—well, who signed off on the blueprints? Who let it pass inspection year after year? You get the org you tolerate. You get the performance you invest in. If middle management is underperforming, it’s not a surprise—it’s a reflection.

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Realizing Your Influence

Let’s talk about another couple of real stories. First, a VP lamented a director who “gets things done,” but doesn’t seem to grasp the bigger picture. They ship. They group hits deadlines. But they’re not business-minded. They’re not helping the company grow, just helping it move.

Whose fault is it that they don’t have better business alignment? Who was supposed to ensure those notable delivery skills were going in the right direction?

Second, when founders neglect parts of their company because they have more urgent issues, yet lament that those areas become… neglected. Cause and effect much? Startups rarely have any part of them operate well on autopilot. Getting areas of responsibility to operate autonomously takes real work and effort.

When I hear, “We were heads-down on closing our Series A,” or “We just needed to hit product-market fit,” followed by “Now our engineering org has no accountability,” I want to ask: Did you think the neglected parts of the org would grow themselves?

You can’t ignore the team for three quarters and expect a high-performing, aligned culture to bloom in the shadows. You deprioritized it. You made a tradeoff. That was your choice. It’s fine! But own it. What we can’t do is treat it like a random twist of fate. Leadership isn’t just about making the right decisions. It’s about taking responsibility for the ones you already made.

Agency is Everything

Let’s be clear: your people have agency, too. But when you’re in a leadership seat, your default mode must be to ask: “What’s within my power to change?” Because once you abandon that mindset, you make yourself helpless. You’re no longer a leader but a passenger with complaints.

Leadership is the art of creating change. That means recognizing you’re always shaping the org, whether intentionally or by omission. Even when you’re too busy. Even when it feels risky. Even when you choose not to act, that’s still a choice.

Every time you didn’t hold someone accountable, you trained them that it was okay. Every time you kicked the can down the road, you showed the team what your priorities truly were. Every time you avoided a tough conversation, you taught people that mediocrity is safer than candor.

If that sounds like a lot of responsibility, it’s because it is. But it’s also empowering. In the same way you built this current state, you can reshape it.

Transitioning into Action

The moment you shift from finger-pointing to finger-on-the-trigger, things start moving. Rapidly. You stop asking, “Why are they like this?” You start asking, “What am I doing to change it?”

Yes, the org isn’t perfect. But now it’s in motion. And once leadership reclaims its agency, momentum becomes your ally again. You built this team. The good. The bad. The misaligned.

You don’t need permission to rebuild it. You just need to decide that the dance starts with you.

You’re there doing the tango, might as well lead.