You’re right! Everyone around you is crazy. Working as a middle manager in the corporate world is a bit like being Alice in Wonderland. Everything around you is nuts and you’re the only one that seems to think this is strange! You are surrounded by bad decisions from both directions, Bad bosses and bad team members. You are on the hook for executing decisions that you had no part in. It is without a doubt the hardest most underappreciated job today. There are countless books, and articles were written about how to be a great leader. Whether you want to emulate Steve Jobs or Jack Welch. That is of no real help to you. You don’t need to know how to be a great leader. You need to know how to survive the actual situations you are facing today right now. That’s what we are going to do here together. Answer your questions and figure out how to survive and thrive in the corporate middle. Make no mistake, your job as a middle manager is extremely important! There is a war on middle management as trying to create a flat organization and removing layers is all the rage. I mean who doesn’t want a utopia where there are no bosses? Google famously tried to do that in 2002 and it failed miserably. They got rid of all their managers, what happened? It ushered in complete chaos. It only lasted a few months before they realized their mistake and brought them back. What Google found which should be abundantly clear to you Is that great manager’s, and more so middle management is vitally important. Gallup found that Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work. What does that tell us… We are hugely important. And yet there are a lot of terrible managers out there. The truth is it is not really our fault. Middle management is the least supported position in the company. Almost no training is involved what so ever. I remember when I was promoted as a manager to my team when I was 27. Did I get extensive training or coaching? Nope. I had a one day course on how to be a manager. Everything else is on the job learning. You are not going to get support from your Org. The only support is going to be from other middle managers. Being a middle manager sucks, you are going to be the first to get blamed and the last to get credit. It is just the nature of the position. We can, however, get through this together. We are going to figure out what works and doesn’t work. So we can survive and thrive together. If you have a question you want me to answer or just a crazy story you want me to share head over to the thecorporatemiddle.com or just send me an email [email protected]. Look forward to hearing from you and remember the reward for good work is just more work.