Middle Management Blues

I've been around a bargaining unit all my working life, so unions are natural to me. I was even in one, once. My personal opinion is that unions are a creation of management - if management treats their employees like crap, the employee have very little chance except to form and/or support a union. My company thinks that middle managers like me should go out of our way to crush the union, and the union leaders think they should go out of their way to be pains in the backsides of middle managers like me. That's not the way it usually works. Our CEO came from one of these ivory tower consulting firms, and his HR manager used to be the old CEO's admin (I'm not kidding) and so their combined clue is about the same as three paramecia. They don't understand the types of relationships we need to promote to keep the wheels on the road. We work with these people every day. I actually like most of them. I want their union to have some solidarity, because I'd rat...

In a screwed up organization, it is not unusual to have a dead man walking. He knows the axe is coming, and he’s half-way to zombie land. It’s no use to try to explain anything remotely complicated, because he will zone out before you get to the interesting parts and you will have to do it again (at least once). One mill manager we had went through this for 6 or 7 weeks before the Nazis came in to help him clean out his personal things. This same guy once told me that if he pursued the course of action I was advocating, I would receive “the new mill manager bonus”, i.e. a new mill manager. (He must have been very experienced at pacing along the gallows…)(And he blew me off that time though he admitted that I was right…) You might remember that my boss got the heave-ho a few weeks back, and now we have the new boss bonus. The new boss is interim. He came from headquarters. He is the VP’s designated troubleshooter. (Can you get the flavor for this already? This bonus is not ...

I promised some time back to come up with a list, so after some rumination I’ve come up with some possibilities. Feel free to suggest some more and we’ll do this again… The micro-manager. Yes, the ever-popular micro-manager, guaranteed to make your life a living hell. Ordinarily does not allow anyone else to make a decision. If you do make one, it will get over-analyzed and thrown back in your face repeatedly (especially if it turned out badly). MMs work their butts off because they have to. The mis-informationistas. This is a branch off the lying-bastard family tree. A mis-informationista is too sly to come out and tell a whopper. They prefer the backdoor. One might suggest to your manager that they saw you come in from lunch an hour late, but neglect to say that they saw you leave for lunch an hour late. The “There’s no ‘me’ in team (except ME)”. Two facets to this person – a) must be on every team, and if you leave them off they fuss, and b) they claim 100% of t...

I’m not a big Talking Heads fan, but this part of "Life During Wartime" is one of my favorite lyrics of all time: I’ve changed my hairstyle So many times now I don’t know what I look like. If you remember the post from a few weeks back about consultants, then you will understand how this snippet fits in to a blog about business and middle management. There is a little more to it than that, but it is at the core of one of our problems. My first job out of college was at a plant that was part of a public company but two families owned a majority of the shares. One family ran the business, and the other controlled the board. It had been that way for decades. Things there did not change – you could set your clock by the CEO’s trips to the cafeteria to smoke his Nicaraguan cigars. All promotions were from the inside. If you cut your teeth in one area of the plant it was unusual to take a promotion to another area. In a word, the place was inbred. In some ways it ...

You may have a non-fictional pointy-haired boss who says stuff that he hears the big bosses say because he (or she) has no imagination, or maybe no grasp of the American version of English. As a public service, I’m here to help. If you have some more, please feel free to add them to the comments section at the bottom of this post. Sense of Urgency What they think it means – Employees get the stuff done that the bosses want before their boss asks for it. What we think it means – Spend nights and weekends getting something done that will likely sit on the boss’s desk for several days before they even look at it (and then they will misunderstand it so badly they will ask us to re-write it several days after that). What it should mean – The manager very specifically requests a task is completed, giving an exact deadline sometime in the near future, giving it a priority over all over work for that individual or team, and providing the resources required to get it done. Weasel alert...

The most amazing thing happened this week. My boss was fired. It wasn’t a shot from the blue, because he’d done some stupid things. He wasn’t exactly a favorite of his boss. If you’ve read many of these little musings you might have gathered that he wasn’t very good at his job. He wasn’t, but he had some good qualities. He was a serious micromanager, and like many from that work-weasel phylum, he had to work his butt off to keep up. I respected him for the hours he put in. When he put his mind to it he was very prepared and he was knowledgeable about key subjects. I feel badly for him because he was a decent person when you got him out of the “boss” persona. I feel great for me because he was a terrible boss and it was only a matter of time before his boss persona truly screwed up my career. There is a group of a half-dozen managers who really guide the happenings in the plant: the big boss, obviously; the HR manager; the operations manager; the maintenance manager; the ma...

I used to really like Dilbert until I joined the ranks of middle management. Then it stopped being funny and started becoming eerily prescient. Take, for example, the strip from 10/25 . I'd like to post it but I think Scott Adams would sue me for all my Google ad revenue. Anyway, if you substitute just two words in Asok's line in the last panel you have my boss in a nutshell. It is unbelievably uncanny. I massaged it a bit and sent a copy to an ex-coworker who agreed exactly. BTW, the reason he is an ex-coworker is because my boss is such a cliche-spewing automaton. Some folks have a very low tolerance for idiocy... Now you know why I write this thing.

My family got XM radio for me several birthdays ago and it has proven to be one of the best gifts ever. We live far from any metro area, so regular FM radio consists of a couple classic rock stations (I never thought I’d get sick of ZZ Top, but…), some Spanish/ethnic stations, and many, many country stations. AM is mostly Rush, Beck and the odd UFO enthusiast. My tastes are varied, but basically rock. Classic rock, hair metal, acoustic/folk, new wave/80s, jam bands, alternative – if it’s in the rock genre I probably listen to it regularly. One of the highlights of my day is listening to Gone Phishin on the Jam On channel on my way home. Today I worked so late I missed most of it – I’m an idiot. I have a moderately long commute, which means I get a good opportunity to listen on both legs. On the way into work I’m gearing up for the day ahead – what meetings do I have and what do I want to get out of them; what tasks do I need to complete and which deadlines can I blow off (beca...

I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, so forgive me for repeating, but I have never really fit the leadership mold of the plant where I work, and I suspect of the entire division of the company. They like the driver-driver model, type A personality. I’m not. On the Meyers-Briggs test I am right smack dab in the middle. In many places this would be a positive boon, but where I work I am considered weak, too accommodating, and a poor delegator. I would admit to the latter as something I need to improve (and would state unequivocally that it is better than delegating everything, which some of my co-workers do). I totally disagree that I’m weak (of course I do) and I’m proud that people think I’m accommodating. Ever since I started down the management track I have heard these complaints. I am certain that I was passed up for promotions because of these perceptions. I will freely admit that I have a naïve utopian worldview in which a for-profit company should be a meritocr...

As I’ve written on at least one occasion, life is a bell curve. There are a few really good bloggers, a lot of average bloggers, and a few unreadable hacks. This is a near universal rule. Statistically it’s a hard and fast rule, but have you heard of poetic license? One exception to this is consultants. Here it goes like this – there are a few decent consultants and a whole bunch of bottom-dwelling scum suckers. No disrespect intended… The plant where I work is part of a much bigger company, but we’ve been traded around like the bear in Pit. Times are tough, and sometimes it seems we’re too desperate for that magic bullet that will turn our fortunes around. Into that void leaps a host of schleps to rescue us from our money. You may have noticed that I tend to be a bit negative when it comes to the people who pay my salary. It’s true. My company is a lot like a self-obsessed teenage girl who stares into the mirror all day and wonders aloud to all her friends, “Am I pretty? ...

My boss doesn’t have the faintest freaking clue what I do all day.   He always seems astounded when I beg off assignments because I’m busier than Nathan’s hot dog chef on the 4 th of July.   Surely he must wander past my office in the middle of the morning and notice that I’m out in the plant, right?   He must read all those emails I send his way of the initiatives I’m working on and the results I’m getting.   I know he walks past my office on his way out at the end of the day and sees me in there pounding away on the keyboard.   What is he thinking? Here’s some background on this dysfunction-in-the-making.   He’s fairly new.   He’s younger than anyone in the group who reports to him.   He wants to make headlines and continue his assault on Mt. Senior Executive.   I’ve been there a while.   I’m not quite as young as he.   I want to do my job well, have a successful team, and go home to my family at the end of the day with enough en...

Errors make life interesting.   If it weren’t for errors, both by us and by those around us, life would be pretty dang boring.   Some harried people (like me) might enjoy a boring day once in a while, but human nature is that we’re just a bunch of screw-ups. I saw a presentation recently in which the expert stated we all make at least five errors per hour.   I would suggest that number is low, because the only worn-out key on this keyboard is the backspace (and I’ve only had this computer for a month).   I hope I’m a better at managing than typing, but I’m certain I make mistakes all the time – some I realize quickly and some I never learn about (I’m wagering on this one because I’ll never know, will I?).   I came upon a group of workers a few weeks back during a production interruption, where four of them were not working and one was.   They were doing a miserable job and I’m sure the four were resting from recent exertions.   It did not stop me from ...

I live in a part of town that attracts an unusually large number of non-American residents.   Most of these are European professionals, and for many of them it is the first time they’ve owned a home.   The guy who lives kitty-corner hails from Spain .   I’m willing to bet that he had never seen a lawn mower before. One fine spring day I was sitting in my living room relaxing from a hard day’s labor.   My neighbor, who had recently moved in, was attempting to mow his lawn.   The large cardboard box was indication that the mower was a new purchase.   Though we live in an area with numerous Mexican immigrants, the instructions were apparently not in Spanish or he chose not to read them. It was a nice mower.   Nicer than mine.   It had a nice big bag for catching the clippings.   It had a drive so he did not have to push it.   I glistened in the early evening sun.   I was almost envious. Unfortunately, the house had been vacant for a wh...

Managers at my place of work dearly love to use this quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”   They attribute this to Einstein and it makes them feel smart; smarter than their employees for sure.   They can quote Einstein, and he was brilliant (at least as a young man), therefore they must be brilliant. Unfortunately, no one is quite sure that Einstein ever actually said it.   The quote is sure to tick me off, because the implication is that I’m too stupid to figure this out for myself.   I feel chided to change.   Well, folks, if you want to change, it helps to know what to change to. Change is good.   Change is hard.   Michael Hutchence told us, “Don’t Change”.   Seasons change and so did I, according to Burton Cummings .   Carlin put a dollar in a change machine but nothing changed.   The great guru said that it is not necessary to change because survival is not mandat...

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If you liked the band Phish and I told you that I liked the jam on YEM, but DWD was not my favorite, you might reply that you didn’t much care for the new stuff and that the Gamehendge on June 6th of 1994 was the best the band ever did. An eavesdropper who had never heard of Phish might think we were totally nuts. They might be right. By making those statements we were using language to distinguish ourselves from the madding crowd, and we were also using it to bond between ourselves. Managers often overlook or fail to recognize how language can raise their status among those above and below. What might happen if I sidled up to a young lady in a Phish T-shirt and offered up, “Did you dig that version of You Enjoy Myself? I thought it cooked.”? It’s likely she would believe me to be a total poser who was trying to pick up on her. I tried to speak the lingo but I failed. A true speaker recognized it and knew I had pretentions but maybe not much else. So you’re a middle manager. You...

A manager will not be successful if he does not set priorities. Success comes in many colors and flavors, but if you measure it by the number of your employees who wish to remain your employees, a person who does not set priorities will not be successful. A manager who refuses to point the way is the antithesis of a leader; he is a bureaucrat. The corollary to this is that a good manager needs a good boss who is willing and able to set priorities. A weasel boss will not set priorities and then blame you when you fail to deliver. We will try to walk the fine line here, since we’re all middle managers, of managing versus leading. In some work dialects, they are synonymous. In some they have vastly different meanings. The fine line we’ll walk is that we will try to do more leading than managing. Leading is setting the way, finding the right path, being the good example, complimenting the good and coaching the bad, etc. Managing is ensuring report b-27 is complete, monitoring the abse...

So like lots of other people I’m fixing to write a blog. I have no particular expertise at this subject except that I is one. But before I go too deeply into anything I need to establish some bona fides so that anyone who has the misfortune of reading this (and others, if there are any) will know that I’m just another schmuck middle manager. You can use your own definition, and there are probably Harvard MBAs who can parse it correctly, but to me a middle manager has direct reports who are themselves supervisors, and he/she has a boss who is multiple steps from executive status. This is the position I am in – we have 8 supervisors who look to me for leadership, and in turn they have 70-odd mechanics who look to them to set the course. I have a boss who is three steps from the CEO. I am also in charge of three engineers. The skill set required to manage engineers, and other technical fields, is quite different than supervisors who have come up through the ranks. No doubt we will get t...