Manager Sandwich: The Middle Manager's Survival Blog

When I was younger, I would ask my Grandfather Harry about the family business.  My Great Grandfather Sam was a cooper before he emigrated from Belarus to Canada, and later to the United States at the turn of the 20th century.  His father Avraham (my great-great grandfather) and his grandfather Shmuel Zelek (my great-great-great grandfather) were coopers as well.  Coopers are tradesmen that make wooden barrels from oak staves and lids, bound wrought iron bands.  It is a combination of carpentry and blacksmithing that was essential to packaging goods up into the mid 20th century.  Today, cooperage is mainly for whiskey barrels utilized to age the liquor and add special characteristics. www.barrelsdirect.com Originally, when my Great Grandfather immigrated to the United States, he worked as a heat treater in a Flint, Michigan auto plant making driveshafts.  His brother Ed and him formed a barrel making business that last a few years before they went their sep...

    Over six months ago I experienced something that I haven't been through since my very first job renting prom tuxedos; I was fired.  Don't get any gossipy ideas, I wasn't let go because of anything immoral, illegal, or unethical.  My employment was terminated for "not achieving the goals of my position".  This is a very nebulous statement, and one that is very common when you are in upper management or on the upper end of middle management.     There is a strata in middle management where as long as you are doing your job, and business conditions aren't disastrous, you are pretty secure in your position.  You will notice that your manager or boss doesn't enjoy the same flavor of stability.  In my 25 years in heavy industry, I have seen countless regime changes that have resulted in a purging of the upper management.  Are these managers incompetent? Not always.  Are they insolent and stubborn? Sometimes....

As a middle manager, we are often the target of the frustration from our direct reports.  This is particularly intense if you are in a manufacturing environment where you may have dozens of hourly employees as well as salaried supervisors reporting to you.  In a previous post back in February 2011, I wrote about the importance of communication ( www.managersandwich.com/2011/02/karaoke-communication-dont-be-talking.html ) when relaying news, both good and bad.  The ultimate squeeze play is when we are the bearers of bad news and are forced to deal with the negative response of those in our charge. In many situations, I have correctly and politely communicated to my superiors of the probable response that a new directive or program will illicit from the workforce. This is mainly an informative exchange, and not a refusal to relay the information.  Sometimes I am not so polite, in fact, my responses have been recently characterized as frank, succinct, and colorful...

    One of my favorite books is  Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.  I read it on my own while in middle school, a second time by assignment in High School, and a third time while I was a student in college.  Mr. Salinger succinctly illustrates a timeless picture of teenage angst and a young man's realization of his self-centered behavior.  Some of the language or descriptions slightly date the book.  However, unlike so many classics read in High School, it allows an opportunity for any young man, and young women to take a look inside themselves to see even just a sliver of self-realization.      One of the least favorite books (mainly because of the main character) is Rabbit Run  by John Updike.  I read this book about two years ago. I was travelling back from Florida with my son Alek.  We were both listening to a program on NPR (on the day of the author's birthday) which included several past interviews with John Up...

When it comes to presentations, there is no such thing as the old "Overhead Projector" anymore.  Just about every meeting room has a computer projector, and nobody uses clear overhead film.  Just about every presentation from a classroom to a boardroom is done with Microsoft Powerpoint.  Let's just get this straight, this rant is not anti-technology.  I only aim to point out certain things to avoid when using Powerpoint with its infinite detail capabilities when giving a presentation.  Remember, just because we can do things, doesn't mean we should. When it comes to putting every bell and whistle that Powerpoint has to offer into a presentation, just use some common sense, and have some mercy on the audience with these tips: One font at a time please.  Just because there are about a gazillion fonts available, doesn't mean you need to use the goofiest one to make your point stand out.  Use simple easy to read fonts, anything Gothic, cursive, or se...

Everywhere you go, you will find people who are just dying to be in charge, that is until they have to do something with all that sought after responsibility.  Being a leader, for those of us slugging it out in the middle manager slit trenches, is all about making decisions; mostly the unpopular kind.  The easy decisions, are well, easy. As an old boss of mine would say, "That's easy, it's a no brainer!" Of course, that is assuming easily enough that I was a complete dumbass when I came to him for his infinite wisdom.  The simplicity of my challenge completely eluded my simpleton nature. I would always tell him that if it was easy, the guys doing the job would have already fixed it.  I was trying to get him to understand a much bigger problem that he was conveniently trivializing. So we all have had a boss, a middle manager who reigned over our even lower level of management, who thought our challenges and decisions were easy.  What is worse is when we are ...

During the past twelve years, I have had the fortune of working in a rural area as well as urban environments.  Each year, on my drive to work through rural areas, I notice the fields being turned over from one crop to another.  The corn is planted in the spring after the wheat harvest, and is knee-high by July.  It dries in the fall, harvested, with the long stalks used for silage to feed cattle.  During the next spring, the ground is plugged for soybeans which dry to a golden brown in the late summer.  After harvest, the fields are then planted for winter wheat, and the cycle begins again. Throughout many conversations with co-workers and prospective employees that I have met in interviews, I have learned so much about how people make their living.  They have been performing some of the most important and long standing tasks known to civilized human beings.  There is a special care that these family farmers take while they tend to the crop c...

The concept of a flat Earth dates back to the Bronze Age.  Early Greek philosophers including Pythagoras and later Aristotle were able to empirically develop the concept of a spherical Earth.  Ptolemy, hundreds of years later also used a spherical Earth model in the development of maps and the constructs of latitude and longitude.  How was it that such a developed science could be so easily dismissed in the dark ages?  For hundreds of years, the knowledge and understanding of a spherical earth was documented, yet for over 500 years you were labeled a heretic for even suggesting it.  The crews of Columbus’s initial New World Journey were terrified of the evils of over-speculated sea monsters and the inevitable fall off the edge of the world.  If you are encountering a culture shift in your workplace, then you have nothing to worry about compared what good ole’ Chris endured. Not only did Columbus need to get funding, he needed to recruit a crew of me...

Bussellisms - Annoying things I say to my coworkers when they gripe at work.  You may be hearing these for the first time, so you may enjoy some of them, unless of course, you have to live or work with me . . . . 1)  If it was easy, we could hire chimpanzees to do it and pay them in banannas. 2)  If "Ifs" and "Buts", were candies and nuts, oh what a Purim it would be . . . . 3)  There is an a**hole in every group, you are lucky if there is only one.  If they leave, quit, die, or leave, there are many just waiting to take their place . . . .like dandelions. 4)  When asked how things are going on a bad day .  . . "If it was going any better, I would have to pay to be here." 5)  When asked how things are going on a really bad day . . . " Just Peachy!" 6)  Work isn't supposed to be fun, and it isn't suppose to be easy.  If it was fun and easy, it would be called "Play" and you would have to pay money to do it.  Be ...

When Apollo astronauts travelled to the moon, they had the rarest of opportunities to view the entire earth from a distance.  From the windows of their spacecraft, the Earth was a gleaming sphere of blue, green, brown, and white.  From that view, there was nearly trace of mankind  visible from their position.  None of the strife of war, famine, or human sprawl could be seen or identified. "The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me—a small disk, 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don't show from that distance." — Frank Borman, Apollo 8, 'A Science Fiction World—Awesome Forlorn Beauty,' Life magazine, 17 January from www.a-gc.com 1969.   These brave astronauts also couldn't notice any of the happenings of everyday life.  Traffic Jams, late trains, commuter flights, snow days, people rushing,...