Organisations depend on their managers. They keep the business running (management) and set the direction of travel in their area (leadership). The context they maintain determines performance (culture). 

Beyond their official job, every manager is an expert in one or more aspect of the workings of the organisation. At the very least they understand its tensions and how to navigate its weaknesses.

That makes them uniquely placed to sense the best next step in the organisation's development. Consultants may support this process and experts describe what happened elsewhere. But the only people with the ability, knowledge and authority to lead change are its managers. 

It's common sense.

Managers are responsible for both incremental and radical change. Incremental change is normal – targets increase quarterly, we meet our annual objectives, and increase efficiency by reducing waste. But radical change is risky and most sensible people avoid taking unnecessary risks.

Which is why managers are crucial. They help organisations do the things that individual employees wouldn't. Such as making radical changes.

There's nothing more radical than transforming a well-established and profitable organisation.

We're not just talking about adopting new ways of working, innovating with technology, and exploring new markets. Those are just skills managers must master so they can become more agile. We're talking about deliberately walking away from comfortable certainty into an abyss of unknown outcomes. 

Jumping into the unknown tends to activate people's sense of danger and self-preservation. Their credibility, reputation, and careers are on the line. The more senior the manager, the  more they have to lose, and the greater the perceived risk. 

Research shows that people cannot learn unless they feel psychologically safe. The risk of losing their job by comprimising the company's assets generates a fear response. Increased risk makes people hold-on more tightly to what they know. It increases inertia, prevents learning, and makes change impossible.

The answer is for managers to set the pace of agile transformation by leading the transformation. It is the in every manager's best interest to invest in their own learning, to design experiments themselves, to role-model transparency and being wrong, develop their own capabilities, and encourage leadership amongst their direct reports.

The key to de-risking agile transofmation is by developing leadership at every level.  

Developing leadership at every level is what makes managing the digital age different.

Machine model management prevailed from the industrial revolution up until about the year 2000, when internet and communications technologies changed everything. Back then, you didn't want too many leaders, because leaders take people in new directions. Firms that had invested big in the machinery of mass-production didnt want leaders. They put supervisors in to operate and optimise processes. Managers oversaw the supervisors and looked after the assets. Executives managed the managers, and a CEO managed the interace between them, the board, and the shareholders. 

Not so in the digital age, where many employees are knowledge workers. As long as they understand the outcomes they are working towards, people decide how to do their work themselves. Even the lowest ranking knowledge worker makes decisions without asking their boss if it's okay.  Unless they are following a predefined process, we can say knowledge workers manage their own work. And, if they set their own priorities for the day, we can say they are leading their work too. 

If workers are now managers and self-leaders, then the manager's job is to create the conditions for their success. They do this by: 

- ensuring priorities are clear (so teams and individuals know their objectives)
- leading collaboration between stakeholders (because work is complex and full of dependencies)
- developing competence (including their own)

Only managers can create these conditions for success. They are the experts of their organisations and they hold the authority for its governance.