Thaw

Unfreeze Middle Management to Unlock Strategy, Innovation, and Growth

De: Jimmy Leppert, Justin Wasserman

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Thaw puts words to a truth I've lived throughout my career: strategy matters, but it's that people driving it that determine impact. This book is a practical, battle-tested playbook for unlocking human potential and accelerating change."
—Daniel Dworkin, Organizational Development Leader, Google

"The greatest barrier to organizational success is often not strategy or execution, but the gap between them. Thaw brilliantly addresses that challenge by revealing how the 'frozen middle' of corporations can limit performance and how leaders can unlock its tremendous potential."
—Joseph Impicciche, Former President & CEO, Ascension

"Having worked directly with Jimmy and Justin, I’ve seen the principles in Thaw unlock performance in complex, global organizations. When leaders truly engage the middle of the organization, the results are not incremental—they are transformative. This book provides a practical, proven path to turn strategy into real outcomes in weeks and months, not years."
—Molly Laegeler, leading integrated energy company executive

"Our partnership with Empactful Advisors has been instrumental in driving significant improvements across our operations, particularly boosting throughput, reducing costs and enhancing overall reliability and consistency. What sets EA apart is their highly collaborative process, which taps directly into the frontline by sourcing valuable ideation from the employees closest to the work on a daily basis. The structured framework they introduced has truly energized our workforce, created a real sense of inclusion and elevated our operational performance."
—Kevin Crutchfield, CEO, Intrepid

"Thaw brilliantly addresses what matters most to me as a CEO: how to deliver breakthrough performance while also building leaders at every level. The strategies are thoughtful and effective for middle managers and senior leadership alike. This is a must-read business book."
—Joseph Lee, M.D., President and CEO, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation