managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: Earning Your Manager Black Belt
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/04/earning-your-manager-black-belt.html
Manager In The Middle. Saturday, April 4, 2015. Earning Your Manager Black Belt. After the class, she was excited that she had made it through her first class. I was excited that she was joining me on this journey. I even envisioned that one day maybe she and I could be partners in a school and teach others the nuances of the fighting arts. Two weeks later, she quit. The MITM Vantage Point. Here is the kicker: are they willing to stay the course long enough to get their belt really dirty? To earn your bl...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: People-Focused or People-Management?
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/06/people-focus-or-people-management.html
Manager In The Middle. Thursday, June 25, 2015. For the most part, we were demoralized. Forget Disney this year. As companies retrenched and resized, the leadership conversation changed to the remaining people. How can we keep productivity and revenue growth up? Internal morale is suffering, we need to get them refocused, we need to get them positive and passionate again. We need to get their buy-in. They need to believe in us again. Any ideas? To illustrate, it's pretty common knowledge that when a pers...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: Staying in the Lane
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/02/staying-in-lane_4.html
Manager In The Middle. Wednesday, February 4, 2015. Staying in the Lane. In the midst of a conversation with two MITM peers recently, the subject we were discussing caused my mind to drift back to when I commuted to work on the southern California freeways. In the morning and afternoon rushes, with traffic moving just a shade faster than a walking pace, one has time to observe and analyze. I did. We dart in-and-out into their lanes, thinking that we are going to come out ahead. We don't. Are their teams ...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: December 2014
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html
Manager In The Middle. Sunday, December 28, 2014. I was once told by the president of the company that there were really only two rules: send money and, if you get closed by the health department, take down the sign and leave the keys on the counter along with your resignation. As crazy as that sounds in today's world, outside of the built-in 24-hour constant stress that the foodservice industry puts on managers, it was nearly a perfect job. Change the menu? You do it. Change the advertising? The MITM Va...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: Ethics Are Ethics
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/04/ethics-are-ethics.html
Manager In The Middle. Sunday, April 26, 2015. If I stopped by his workstation and asked him how things were going, sometimes he'd chirp up, feigning how it was going to be a great day. Other days, he acted almost like I was insulting him. As time went on, his reactions were more the latter than the former. He looked me in the eye, with a sense of superiority that he pulled from his educational background, and said, "Are you questioning my ethics? Or, is this just a misguided person? Yet, his partner, my...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: Tasking or Training?
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/05/tasking-or-training.html
Manager In The Middle. Sunday, May 24, 2015. Each day you are held to a number of accountabilities as a Manager in the Middle. Chances are, when accountabilities are brought up, immediately your "numbers" come to mind. Are you hitting your revenue and profit goals? Are you making your labor targets? Is anything walking out the back door? How about through the front door? Are the books balancing? When surveys go out to customers, are you overachieving satisfaction expectations? He tasked people well.
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: July 2015
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html
Manager In The Middle. Saturday, July 25, 2015. People will steal from you. And there is little you can do about it. The question is: does everyone else need to be treated like they are thieves, too? The 60% is also the group that can take enough rope to hang themselves. The MITM Vantage Point. The challenge for the MITM is to adequately trust. It's the accountability that keeps the 60% in check. Trusting them to do the right thing every day motivates them. They will generally do the right thing&...Resis...
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: May 2015
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015_05_01_archive.html
Manager In The Middle. Sunday, May 24, 2015. Each day you are held to a number of accountabilities as a Manager in the Middle. Chances are, when accountabilities are brought up, immediately your "numbers" come to mind. Are you hitting your revenue and profit goals? Are you making your labor targets? Is anything walking out the back door? How about through the front door? Are the books balancing? When surveys go out to customers, are you overachieving satisfaction expectations? He tasked people well.
managerinmiddle.blogspot.com
Manager In The Middle: Twenty-Sixty-Twenty & Trust
http://managerinmiddle.blogspot.com/2015/07/twenty-sixty-twenty-trust.html
Manager In The Middle. Saturday, July 25, 2015. People will steal from you. And there is little you can do about it. The question is: does everyone else need to be treated like they are thieves, too? The 60% is also the group that can take enough rope to hang themselves. The MITM Vantage Point. The challenge for the MITM is to adequately trust. It's the accountability that keeps the 60% in check. Trusting them to do the right thing every day motivates them. They will generally do the right thing&...Resis...
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