Thaw: Unfreeze Middle Management to Unlock Strategy, Innovation, and Growth

A guide to organizational transformation targeting the country’s trillion-dollar stagnancy problem—the “frozen middle” of corporate America—and offering strategies to overcome bureaucratic setbacks that hinder innovation, profit, and fulfillment

Corporate America has a trillion-dollar problem: the frozen middle—paralysis in the critical layer of management caught between high-level leadership's vision and frontline employees' execution. This paralysis causes even the most promising initiatives to stall out. It traps passionate managers in inertia and stymies senior leadership. And every year it’s costing companies billions.

As experts in organizational transformation, Jimmy Leppert and Justin Wasserman have spent their careers figuring out how to thaw the frozen middle. Their consulting firm, Empactful Advisors, has led major organizations—including Chevron, Merck, and the Department of Defense—to generate more than $5 billion in cost savings and revenue growth. The key to their success comes from aligning senior leadership and middle management, using empathy and practical frameworks to illuminate the blocks that both sides face, and showing how they can shift from utter disconnect to collaborative goal setting that helps all parties—as well as the company—hit their targets.

In Thaw, Leppert and Wasserman share their field-tested methods for turning strategic goals into tangible outcomes. Along the way, they offer a road map for employees at all levels to learn how to move through the bottlenecks that hold their organizations back and facilitate meaningful change. Middle managers will be empowered to unlock stalled careers, and senior leaders will learn how to galvanize their workforce and achieve bold, accelerated change. In the age of AI, a playbook for improving—and celebrating—human contribution is more essential than ever. Sharp, confident, and timely, Thaw is poised to be the definitive book on ending organizational paralysis and unlocking true potential.