Middle managers have one foot in the senior management door, with the other firmly planted at the supervisory level; they are part of neither, yet they must advocate for both-all while striving for upward mobility. In Making It in Management, Lawrence Anderson provides advice to ensure success for middle managers and middle-managers-to-be. Anderson, a seasoned organization change consultant with more than thirty years of experience, seeks to help managers looking for an edge to move them up the career ladder toward top management. Through anecdotes gained from on-the-job experience, he outlines three key areas: Where managers fit into the organization, the purpose of the organization, and the key roles that need to be executed What credible managers have to know and do to maintain the organization's health How middle managers can enhance their career mobility by finding a good mentor, managing the boss, getting the best from consultants, and managing mind thoughts Making It in Management helps managers develop the kind of thinking they need to move up the corporate ladder and stay at the top.

Making It in Management

Developing the Thinking You Need to Move Up the Organization Ladder ... and Stay ThereBy Lawrence Anderson

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Lawrence Anderson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3520-5

Contents

Foreword...............................................................ixWhere You Fit in the Organization......................................1Chapter 1 The Purpose of Your Organization.............................3Chapter 2 How Your Organization Should Work............................9Chapter 3 Your Job as a Manager........................................15Chapter 4 Multiple Roles You Must Know How to Play.....................21Chapter 5 What Having Credibility Means for You........................25Where Credible Managers Spend Their Time...............................37Chapter 6 Creating Strategy............................................39Chapter 7 Providing Structure..........................................47Chapter 8 Use Processes that Drive Efficiency..........................56Chapter 9 Managing Others to Want to Do Their Best.....................59Chapter 10 Human Performance Challenges................................66Chapter 11 Maintaining a Great Work Climate............................80Chapter 12 Living Core Values..........................................86Chapter 13 Learning to Learn to Learn..................................93Chapter 14 Advocating Well-Managed Change..............................98Bonus Strategies that Accelerate Success...............................103Chapter 15 Finding a Good Mentor.......................................105Chapter 16 Managing Your Boss..........................................109Chapter 17 Mastering Your Mind Thoughts................................114Chapter 18 Getting the Best from Consultants...........................124Chapter 19 Managing Cynicism...........................................129Chapter 20 Deciding to Move Up or Out?.................................134Summary................................................................138Acknowledgements.......................................................144

Chapter One

The Purpose of Your Organization

Key Points for this Chapter: 1. Start with a clear picture of the external results that represent real success for your specific organization and use them as the framework for business decisions and effort; 2. Establish the cause-and-effect relationship between the desired external results and the significant management functions that will achieve them; 3. Institutionalize the discipline of innovation to keep the organization renewed and flourishing.

The higher you go, or hope to, in an organization, the more conceptual knowledge you will need, starting with the big picture of why your organization exists and how it can succeed and grow. Once this conceptual model is clear, your purpose in the organization becomes clearer. It helps you and others to appreciate how you each fit in the organizational setting and enables you to act in a purposeful way.

Each year, for as long as I can remember, Fortune magazine has published its annual report, "The Best Companies in America." To be chosen is great press and a mark of distinction. Whether you call them 'Best of Class' or use some other superlative, the pride that these companies must feel is unimaginable. Or, it could be one of "Canada's Top 50 Employers," another distinction worthy of note. Underlying such distinction is a successful organization and the public recognition must be incalculable in terms of image and, presumably, reward.

Private companies have the objective of creating and keeping customers and government organizations have the objective of providing cost-effective services that are needed and valued by their captive audience, the public. Economic downturns notwithstanding, there is a high correlation between organizational excellence and success. Years back, Peters and Waterman accelerated interest in the characteristics of successful companies with their classic book, In Search of Excellence. Even now, Jim Collin's books, Good to Great and Built to Last, reinforce interest in, and enthusiasm for, the secrets of organizational excellence.

For an Organizational Change Consultant (OCC) like me, these and other authors did us the favor of convincing senior managers that there were universal metrics and strategies to be used to measure and attain organizational excellence and that there are valid practices that need to be a part of a manager's makeup that help her or him to work on the organization and not just in it. This interest in organizational excellence has never ebbed. Nor will it. This is the ultimate challenge for all managers. Creating a better organization increases in importance as managers move up the organizational ladder.

Although I was a full-time OC sole-practitioner for thirty-five years and served many clients, I always found time to teach Organizational Behavior at local universities where I either lived or worked. Business students preparing for careers were naturally keen on learning the secrets of successful companies. Thus, when I began each semester, I asked them to ponder, discuss and agree on the answer to three basic questions:

1. Looking from the outside-in, what do excellent organizations achieve that makes them successful? 2. Looking inside these successful companies, what functions must they excel at to drive their external success? 3. How do these organizations continue to excel and grow?

In relatively short order, these bright and eager students typically arrived at opinions that looked similar to the findings shown in Figure 1. These were fourth year students about to graduate. We then talked about the implication of their conclusions as it applied to their imminent entry into management. In the diagram, Figure 1, they quickly saw the cause-and-effect relationship between the organization's activities and the business results it achieves. Now, they had a context for the remainder of the syllabus: learning how each of the key management functions on the left-side of Figure 1 are learned and performed. Questions 1 and 2, above, were answered in the exercise. Question 3 was answered intuitively: by enhancing existing products or services and by innovating and bringing new products to existing and new markets. Arriving at their conclusions through self-examination, their conclusions were practical and owned by them.

Johnson & Johnson regularly made the 'Top 100 Companies' in the annual Fortune magazine awards. Even though they recently had negative press because of product recalls in 2010 they typically exemplified the characteristics shown in Figure 1. They lived their published credo, or promise, and became a time-honored company. Now it is Apple or Microsoft or Amazon. Amazon started selling books on-line in 1995. Almost each year since, Amazon has used innovation to boost its success. In 2009 its colored E-reader kindle Dx was introduced with great success. Imagine at the time having access to the editorial content of major dailies each day, starting at 4:00am! Business media estimate sales of Kindle at $3.8 billion by 2012! I've read several articles extolling Amazon's virtues including how it focuses on selection, low price and product reliability. One of these countless articles described how Amazon...