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The days and weeks of the rescue had tested the power of global collaboration to save the Wild Boar players and their coach from a potential watery grave. As the world watched with bated breath, several key actors performed as heroes: the Wild Boars themselves, remaining incredibly resilient in tough circumstances; the Navy Seal who perished while ensuring that future divers would have replacement air tanks; and, of course, the Royal Thai Navy and other local and international volunteers from the United States, China, Great Britain, and Australia. However, one actor went largely unnoticed, despite playing a pivotal role in the Thai cave rescue: it was the governor of the Chiang Rai province, Narongsak Osottanakorn, who was responsible for coordinating the mission.

Few managers will ever have to deal with a life-and-death situation like the Thai cave rescue. But managers all over the globe are asked to operate in complex, urgent, and unfamiliar circumstances while achieving stronger and better results. The fundamental mandate of a manager is to solve an ever-growing number of complex problems and achieve extraordinary results through other people. The dynamics of the Thai cave rescue may seem exceptional when compared to your own work dynamics, but Governor Osottanakorn was fundamentally like many of us: a manager coordinating, motivating, and guiding a team. He was a manager able to navigate both downward and upward to communicate critical messages and secure and disperse important resources quickly. While Osottanakorn could have relied solely on the resources in his immediate reach, the Royal Thai Navy Seals, he chose another path. As we return to the governor later in our story, you will see it was his cool-headed assessment of the skills and abilities of the dive teams, along with his instinct for using the talent at his disposal to test alternative ways of extracting the boys, that allowed Osottanakorn to manage the practically impossible rescue.

THE INCREASING COMPLEXITY OF MANAGING

There are approximately 160 million managers in the world today— people who need to drive performance and get work done through others. And that last phrase—the "through others" portion of management—is typically wherein lies the rub. People are inherently imperfect, opinionated, and at times emotional. On a bad day, being a people manager can feel like herding cats. On a good day, managers are the critical bridge between the organization and its employees, translating organizational strategies into concrete action. But no matter whether you manage at a Fortune 100 corporation, a government agency, or a small business, or whether you have more good management days than bad ones, we've found that most managers today feel overworked, overwhelmed, and underappreciated.

Of course being a manager has always had its challenges. The core of the job requires people managers to juggle a hefty load of responsibilities. These include onboarding new employees, communicating performance standards, identifying employee skill gaps, promoting on-the-job development, having career conversations, and many more. Managers are expected to absorb these responsibilities as part of their work, and this typically means managers are busier and more inundated with meetings than their peers. What's more, managers have always been on call for last-minute employee emergencies or work challenges. In short, a manager's day is not their own.

If that were not enough, three ongoing changes add multiple layers of complexity on top of managers' increasing workload.

First, macroeconomic shifts make managing harder. While managers traditionally may have been able to juggle their increasing responsibilities, a few key macroeconomic shifts have made it more of a struggle. Today we see a rise in trade tensions, massive political shifts throughout nations, and a slowing and more volatile economic cycle. As one manager put it: "As managers we are faced with the need to adjust more frequently than ever before as outside economic and political forces impact our company's strategy."

Second, work is more interdependent. During the Great Recession of 2008, most organizations flattened their structures, delayering to cut costs. Managers' spans of control grew and permanently stayed that way—even after the economy began to grow again. Today's typical manager has a team of nine employees, and those employees have more relationships throughout the business than most managers can keep track of. Because today's companies are more matrixed, employees and managers alike must excel not only at getting things done quickly but also at getting things done with and for more people.

Third, work is less predictable. The average organization has experienced five enterprise-level changes over the past three years. These may include, among others, an organizational or leadership change, a merger, or an acquisition. And these same organizations predict a pace of change that will only increase in the foreseeable future. Long gone is the "industrial revolution" model of work where people are assigned predictable work plans from a stable hierarchy and go about their individual tasks. Work today is more dynamic, with shorter time horizons, forcing managers to adjust plans and workflows constantly.