Middle Management Blues

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...