Six Thoughts About Middle Management

I will be doing a talk tomorrow about middle management excellence. Here are six of the points I will be expanding upon - tell me what you think:

Overall premise: Managers are our engines that turn intentions (mission, strategies, goals) into performance and into results.It has never been harder to be a middle manager and we need great middle management more than ever (we don't need to call it that, but we need the work mucking about at the core of where processes, people, and plans intersect and sometimes collide).

1. Let's reframe middle management. It is the best and most challenging job available! If you want to have maximum impact, be a middle manager. Doing so will require that you see dysfunction as a part of your reason for being (and not become a victim of it).

2. Great managers do what others don't or won't. How fast and smoothly the engine runs depends on deliberate and proactive choices you make each day, many times a day. Great managers approach and blast away barriers. They have conversations others are put off and they don't let busy work get in the way of truly important tasks.

3. Management is a social act. Conversations are your currency to generate excellence and bring out the best in others. Erode relationships, erode results.

4. Let's reframe results orientation, too. We can likely agree that to be results oriented is to drive to achieve results. Some of us, however, might need a new paradigm when to better describe managerial activities that most impact results (I have seen how many organizations define results orientation and I invite your to rethink your definition). Think intrinsic, think inspiration, think connection, and then define it again. What managerial activities MOST impact results?

5. If you want to build business, build talent and partnerships. Selling - to internal or external customers - is often a push process but the most powerful way to expand your opportunities and impact is through creating pull. Pull is stickier.This applies to internal and external influencers.

6. Time is precious and expensive. Every conversation, every meeting, every IM, and every email has the potential to engage, excite, enliven, and explain. If you saw a ticker spinning and showing the mounting costs of time spent, would you change how you spent it? This is not an invitation to stop showing up at meetings or stop responding to emails, BTW, great conversations are worth their minutes spent in gold. Even break room banter can be a great use of time (better than many staff meetings!). Relationships = results.

Comments

[Debbie]

Nice article! Thank you.

[David Zinger]

Hi Lisa:

I think you have covered that middle well. Middle to me means heart or core. We need to do more core strengthening. I think middle managers are asked to do more and more and we need to help them determine what they can say no to. If you don't know your no you will yes yourself right into stress, exhaustion, cynicism, and disengagement.

I think we need to help middle managers enhance their own engagement while engaging the people who report to them. To me, and you know my bias, managers don't have to add engagement to their plate, engagement is the way of management.

Middle managers do work with dysfunction or variance. I think Atul Guwande made the strong case that any variance is a trigger for a conversation and these conversations are management and these conversations are engagement.

In 2010, I am reminded of the start of Charles Dicken's 1859 novel (151 years ago)The Tale of Two Cities...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only

[lisa haneberg]

David - I love what you have added here. And I like how you expanded on the idea of the core and strengthening the core. So apt. And thanks for sharing "conversations are management and these conversations are engagement."

[Mary Jo Asmus]

Lisa, I love the emphasis on conversation. Middle managers are running so fast to get things done that they don't believe that relationships, borne out of conversation, are important. I've seen too many of them sink when they didn't pay attention to this. It must be a priority.

[lisa haneberg]

Mary Jo - yes, I agree! Our pace and task lists often inadvertently get in the way of what will most improve progress - talk. And good talk, too. Sometimes it takes some talking, enough to get below the surface to get to the good stuff. When meeting agenda items are only given 2.5 minutes each, the surface is all the far we will get.

[Ken Milloy]

Lisa

This is a fabulous place(David - thanks for the tweet that brought me here!) ripe with good thinking and conversation. I'm glad to have found out about it.

I, like the two of you, believe that middle managers are the key.

If I would argue one point in the dialogue it is the final sentence of the sixt point:

"Even break room banter can be a great use of time (better than many staff meetings!). Relationships = results."

I so believe that break room, over the cubicle, hallway banter and the like is the absolute key to enabling the rest that my preference would be to have the sixth point modified to highlight the importance of banter. It allows for persoanl insight...which leads to commonalities and knowledge...which builds trust...which...

well, you get my point. Thanks Ken Milloy

(PS - David - nie to be back in touch - I've been off exploring the world of engagement and golf and all else in my head for a while. Later)

[lisa haneberg]

Ken - thanks so much for weighing in and adding to the discussion. Yes, the informal chat is what often becomes the glue for real connection and work collaboration and support - excellent point. Thanks for popping over to Management Craft, and David, thanks for sharing the post with your smart readers!

[Erica Sternin]

This conversation is so helpful to me, swept up as I am in crisis mode and budget cuts and layoffs looming. I'm in busy mode -- not relationship building mode. I'd love any ideas that anyone has about HOW to find your "no's" (and not spite your face...) -- It is not yet clear to me what I can NOT do -- and I definitely get it that the conversations are the absolute core, and I truly don't feel like I have time to have them. The other thing that I'd like to hear more about is how to engage within the dysfunction and not get sucked into being dysfunctional. I'm having a hard time keeping myself above the craziness sometimes!

[HR Consulting]

Every management system is built on a set of assumptions and principles. These values form the foundation for each philosophy, technique, and tool included in the system. The High-Impact Middle Management System was designed with eightbasic principles in mind. These principles speak to what is unique about middle management and how middle managers produce great results. These guiding principles apply to organizations of any size or in any industry. In addition to providing a theoretical backdrop for the system, the guiding principles of high-impact middle management can be powerful catalytic tools when used as part of a middle manager’s definition of success. Let’s look at each principle.

[lisa haneberg]

Erica - thanks for your comment! I think we all struggle with staying head and heart above the fray. Keep on truckin'.

[Mitch]

I have to say that I like your last point the best. That one is the relationship building principle that I believe many middle managers forget to do because they're worried that someone else will interpret it as them just sitting around and talking, not getting any real work done. Relationships do equal results, as long as middle managers don't get too carried away with trying to be everyone's friend at all costs.

[Ljiljana]

''It is the best and most challenging job available! If you want to have maximum impact, be a middle manager. '' I am delighted to find someone say it this way. I was worried to say it is wonderful job in my presentation, but I still said it. I feel it is a job for all who like a challenge of making a difference, making an impact. I say to my clients: ''Give it all you got'', as now is the time to show what middle managers are for. Go there and justify your job. All visions and goals need someone in the middle to bring them down to earth where they are being build step by step. Good luck!

[Mike levy]

There's a lot of friction in the middle because you've got the sometimes airy fairy rubbing up against cold reality. It's a challenge to bring upper management down into the trenches to see how their pronouncements get put into action, and to make people in the trenches climb that mountain to see the bigger picture. Sometimes things are lost in translation between goals and actions, but a great middle manager knows how to speak many languages.

[Mike Jons]

I would venture to guess that few mgrs heed your thrid point. The art of good conversations is lost on many of the managers I know. Most can talk well but few listen worth a darn.

[David Peters]

Middle Management has that wonderful need of balance between leadership and management. Setting goals, casting vision, taking initiative, and making strategic decisions is the leadership part. Excellent process, taking affirmative action when there are problems, good decision making is the stuff of good management.
It is often the case that the further up the management ladder you go, the more the role leans toward the leadership. Entry level management is all about good process.
So middle management is the furnace that refines the good leaders. It is the testing ground that determines who has leadership potential, and those who should stay as good managers.