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Archive for the ‘Middle management’ Category

Why There’s No Twitter Version of Successful Leadership

Monday, August 10th, 2009

By William Seidman

More on the issue of instant gratification versus “grit”: determination and consistent hard work:

Recently I was working with a VP of sales who wanted to train his 11 regional vice-presidents (RVPs)  how to lead through a significant change initiative.

The regional VPs had mixed feelings: they were under real and immediate pressure to make their numbers,  and recognized that leadership couldn’t happen without grit.

I asked them if they thought there was a Twitter version of leadership — 140 characters and instant leader. They laughed and realized that - like so many things worth doing - this was a long-term project.

But one of my colleagues thinks we should simply give up and stop trying to get people to move beyond instant gratification.

What do you think?

Posted in Middle management, best practices, management consulting, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »

Sustaining Organizational Change and Change Initiatives

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

By William Seidman

Sustaining the organizational change that your company or group has spent a lot of time and money to implement can be really tough. Many years ago at HP, a first-level manager talked to me about how hard it was to keep the business running while learning a new business process. He was echoing the complaints from his group.

His manager, who was also my manager,  sat him down and asked him a question: “Are you a manager?”

My colleague answered, “Yes.”

Our manager then had a very simple response: “Then manage it!”

The first thing the organization needs to do, from the top executive down, is to actually expect people to find a way to manage the situation. The second thing is to give people some training in how to lead an organization through a change.

This training usually has two parts:

Authentic Commitment,  a belief in the usefulness and validity of the change 

Continuous Demonstration of Tangible Support, in which the manager is taught how to walk the talk of the change

Additionally, managers need to be held explicitly accountable, with both rewards for effectively managing and penalties for focusing merely on keeping the business running.

Obviously, if the executive team is less than actively supportive of the change and of the ways and means to sustain it,  the organization cannot improve.

Posted in Middle management, best practices, business, getting change to "stick", organizational change | No Comments »

Sustaining Change When Your Managers and Supervisors are Pedaling as Fast as They Can

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

 By William Seidman

Sustaining a change to a large organization can be difficult.

At Cerebyte we’ve made great progress in getting the end-user (the sales person, service person, etc.) to buy into and want the change. The problems arise with immediate and second-level supervisors. Without their active support, changes can’t “stick.” So what’s their problem? I see two factors:

1.  Managers are so focused on keeping the business running that looking ahead at the several weeks — or, more often,  the several months — often required for a substantive change is not something they do.  Nearly all of their resources, and most of the resources they supervise,  are just about daily survival.

2. They’re usually untrained in balancing the demands of running the business each day with developing their organization for the future.

Change initiatives only rarely survive these persistent obstacles.

Posted in Middle management, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change | No Comments »

Manage Relationships and Then Get the Work Done

Monday, July 20th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’ve been working with two people in big companies who are feeling frustrated. Both are very accomplished, successful individual contributors who are getting marginalized by their organizations. In one sense, they are creating the problem for themselves; they think that simply working hard, and achieving tangible results, will gain them the respect they desire.

They are not really managing their environment, though. It feels odd to both of them to have to manage their manager and their peers.

A hard truth is that success in an organization has much more to do with managing the relationships around you than just getting work done.

I suggested that both re-think their role into managing their program rather than just working.  It’s not easy, but it is the only way to success.

Posted in Middle management, best practices, management consulting, organizational culture | No Comments »

Middle Managers, Middle Management, and Leadership : The Accuracy of “Dilbert”

Monday, April 13th, 2009

By William Seidman

One of my colleagues used to insist that he didn’t know anyone who got up in the morning saying “My goal for today is to be completely mediocre.”

Clearly he hadn’t been talking to some of the middle managers we’ve all known. What is it about middle management? Why is it so often seen as drags on productivity, creativity, and positive change? Cartoonist Scott Adams has made his career lampooning middle management with Dilbert.

In my discussions with middle managers, I’ve learned some things. One manager told me that his goal was just to survive each day. Another asked me not to talk about our program to anyone - he didn’t want expectations raised!

Middle managers have a difficult job; they are expected to both represent the organization to the workers and to lead the workers at the same time.

I am currently working in a program in which the workers - under middle management - want to move forward and add value to the corporation. But the middle managers are so concerned about daily survival that they constantly and consistently subvert the workers and the program. (Again, think “Dilbert.”)

Ironically, this retrogressive behavior puts more short-term survival pressure on the middle managers. It’s bad for the company and bad for the managers themselves.

There is very little true leadership in middle management in almost any organization. Is the very idea of middle management structurally flawed, philosophically flawed, or … ?

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Posted in Middle management, business, management consulting | No Comments »

 
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