Inside The Messy Middle - When The Story Keeps Shifting, But The Work Stays.

Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real. 

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

In this episode, I reflect on what happens when the story of change keeps shifting, but the work stays the same. I explore the often invisible labour of translation that sits in the messy middle, where people are asked to make sense of strategy before it fully makes sense to them.

This episode invites you to notice the quiet work of holding uncertainty while still offering direction, and to recognise that translation is not about communication or certainty, but about judgement, care, and making work safe enough for others to continue.

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Transcript

When Change Arrives Mid‑Stream

Ali 0:07

Welcome back to Inside the Messy Middle, a series from the inner game of change. In the first episode I talked about what it feels like when you are asked to lead change you did not design, that moment when something arrives already in motion, already named, already urgent. And I said we would explore what it means to translate strategy before it even makes sense to you. That is where I want to stay today. Because once change lands, something else begins to happen quietly. The story keeps shifting, but the work stays. If you sit anywhere near the middle of an organization, you will recognize this. The narrative changes, the language changes, the framing shifts, priorities are refined, re explained and sometimes reversed, but the work remains stubbornly the same. People still need decisions, students still turn up, clients still expect continuity, teams still look to you, and somewhere in that space you find yourself holding the work steady while the story keeps moving around it. This is where a particular kind of pressure lives, not the visible pressure of deadlines or milestones, but the quieter pressure of interpretation. You are no longer just doing your job, you are translating, and often you are translating strategy before it even makes sense to you. So it helps to be clear about what translation actually means in this context. When I use the word translation here, I do not mean communication or messaging, I do not mean simplifying slides or repeating talking points. I mean the work of taking something unfinished and making it safe enough for others to work with. Translation in this context is holding uncertainty while still offering direction. It is turning abstract intent into something people can act on. It is speaking with care about something you are still trying to understand yourself. That is not neutral work. It carries weight. When I think about this part of the work, a few images come to mind. Sometimes it feels like Hermes, the messenger from Greek mythology moving between worlds carrying meaning you did not create, but are responsible for delivering. Sometimes it feels like a linchpin, small, mostly invisible, holding far more attention than anyone realizes. And sometimes it feels like a bridge, absorbing weight, movement and uncertainty so others can cross safely. Different images, same truth. The work is not about authority. It is about holding things together while everything else keeps moving. There is a reason this work sits squarely in the middle. Historically the role we now call middle management emerged as organizations grew more complex. Someone had to sit between strategy and execution, between intent and reality, between ideas and the lived experience of work. That role was never just about supervision. It was about sense making. The messy middle has always existed. We just gave it a title later. In many organizations today, the work of judgment in the middle is still relied on but not always explicitly designed for. People in the middle are expected to translate, observe, adapt change as it moves through the real work. That reliance is there, even when the role is not always clearly named, recognized, or supported. That is not a failure, it is a design reality worth noticing. And it helps explain why the middle so often feels heavy. What makes this moment particularly difficult is that the story keeps moving. You hear one version of the change earlier on, then a refined version, then a slightly different emphasis. This is rarely malicious. Often it is leaders learning in public. But for the people translating the work, the impact is cumulative. Every shift in the story creates more translation work, more explanation, more emotional labor. And this is where self doubt often creeps in. You start wondering if you missed something, if you should have waited, if you should have pushed back harder or complied faster. Most people never say this out loud. They just observe it and keep going. Over time, people who get better at this kind of translation do not become louder or more certain. They become more attentive. They listen longer before explaining, they resist filling every gap with answers, they are careful about what they pass on and changed and what they quietly reshape. Becoming a better translator is less about technique and more about tolerance. Tolerance for ambiguity, tolerance for not knowing yet, tolerance for carrying questions a little longer than feels comfortable. Better translation rarely looks impressive, but it makes work feel safer. Rather than offering advice, I want to offer a few things to consider if you find yourself here. What story are you being asked to translate right now? What parts of the work have not changed at all despite the shifting narrative? What are you carrying that no one has explicitly named? And what would it look like to slow translation down just enough to make thinking safer? These are not actions, they are reflections. Sometimes clarity begins there. The messy middle is often spoken about as a problem to be solved. I see it differently. It is where judgment lives, it is where experience speaks, it is where change either becomes meaningful or quietly fractures. When the story keeps shifting, but the work stays, something important is being revealed about the system, about the design, about what the change is asking of people. If we learn to listen here, we learn faster. In the next episode I want to explore what happens when this translation work becomes invisible and why capability in the middle is so often mistaken for resistance. For now, if this episode describes something you're living, know this. You're not behind, you are not failing, you are standing where the work actually is. That is the messy middle. Until next time.