where the heck is middle management?

Ever since the corporate world thought of flattening their organizations, making it more lean and mean in the last two decades, the obvious victim were those in what we call "Middle Management". These were the unlucky fellows who were caught between those who set the company strategy and those who did the daily grunt work of supervising resources. Whereas I would agree to an extent that middle management is where we could easily cut some fat out of the management body, it also requires that both junior and senior management need to stretch themselves out, in order to reach one another. This is where it gets messy.
Unfortunately, some organizations still have not realized this need to fill the gap. The results have been devastating. Corporate strategies and directions are not realized and made into tangible, daily operational activities. We tend to fail miserably by not looking at this area, especially for large organizations that really need a good number of middle managers. People in middle management positions right now are overly stretched to make ends meet. There is just too much distance because managers on both ends of the spectrum (both junior and senior) just don't see the need to budge. They just expect everything to be business as usual.
I consider myself to be at the lower rung of middle-management right now. Up is still a long way to go. I honestly am finding it difficult trying to translate vision and mission, target KPI's, and corporate strategies into tactical programs that can be converted into operational activities since there's just soo much disparate activities that need to be grouped and managed together. Somestimes, it just doesn't make sense.