Middle Management Blues

Behind every screw-up, behind every poor decision, behind every botched project there lurks a conflict.   Someone, somewhere was not sure about what to do, or they favored the wrong thing, or they just plain misjudged the situation and bad things happened.   Bad things, man.   Life for a manager is tough enough and then fate throws bad things down.   How many times this week have you had to drop the good stuff to go pick up the debris from a conflict? Trouble is, you rarely know a conflict is brewing.   They don’t teach ESP at Harvard last I heard, and they didn’t teach it at my beloved Podunk state school either.   There are pretty twisted people in my department, whether it is natural or self-induced, and I doubt I would want to know what they are thinking anyway.   But for their own good (and my own good) I need to know.   Maybe I can guess… I’m not talking about the traditional definition of “conflict” here.   We don’t have emplo...