High Impact Middle Management

Quick, when is the last time you read a book targeted to help middle managers hone their craft?  A magazine article?  Information on middle management is often over shadowed by the Amazonian volume of material directed towards company leaders.  Leadership can plot the course and sometimes steer the ship, but it can't coordinate all the functions necessary to keep a large ship steaming the seas.  It takes middle management.

Lisa Haneberg wrote High Impact Middle Management to provide a systematic process for implementation of planning, goal setting, performance management, problem solving, process improvement, relationship building, analysis, communication, budgeting and decision-making.  This process is called the H.I.M.M. system and is built on principles lasered at what is unique about middle management and how this professional can produce significant results.

The Engine's Oil:  Producing Results

I love RORs!  Results-oriented-responses are oil.  Lisa injects RORs into the middle manager's work.  No matter what the process, RORs will help to peak performance.  Examples are:

• Being an owner
• Being active
• Generating
• Keeping promises
• Influencing through enrollment
• Being service oriented
• Being coachable
• Practicing quality dialogue

Success

H.I.I.M. is also a great educational experience for the middle manager's manager.  When success is defined by middle managers:

• Being accountable and taking ownership
• Making a positive contribution
• Being outstanding role models
• Obtaining results
• Being flexible and nimble
• Managing people for optimal productivity and satisfaction
• Being responsive to other's ideas and concerns

When viewed this way, how could the manager's manager not want to invest in the educational process?

The Playbook

This is sweet!  Lisa has developed outlines for a business playbook, which she likens to playbooks used by sport teams.  Think of planning for your department, goals, implementation, tracking, measuring performance and optimizing workflow - all laid in simple fashion.  She also provides downloadable templates from her Web site. 

Mucky Muck

This sounds like something nasty and smelly that you step into at work.  It is.  I used to call middle management, a position that I've personally held for over twenty-eight years, the fire hydrant.  Picture your reports and bosses as dogs.  Enough said.  Lisa provides invaluable insight into keeping your own fire hydrant dry! 

Smooth

Whole chapters are devoted to organizational alignment, work flow inhibitors, time management, management myths and optimizing individual performance.  This is nuts and bolts management, stuff that you can actually use.  No fish, cheese or minutemen here.

To Coach & To Be Coached

Lisa provides clear information on the art of coaching along with some most excellent questions to help the coaching process.  And to coach you must be coachable.  Lisa says, "Coachability is the degree that you are open to what your environment can offer, or the extent to which you will accept and consider input and ideas."  Lisa offers a fresh and unique perspective here.

Go Buy The Book

High Impact Middle Management isn't one of those books you can read and retire to the den bookshelf.  Not if you're interested in improving as a manager, that is.  Stop by Lisa's Web site Management Craft for links to her book and volumes of more useful information on management.

Comments

[Wayne Turmel]

I agree. I had Lisa on my podcast, The Cranky Middle Manager in its early days and she was terrific. The book is really practical and focused on those of us in middle management. Besides a small problem using the term mucky-muck and not giggling, it's all good.

Thanks for focusing on her work. What kept you?

[Dave]

Hi Wayne,

That is a most excellent question since I've had her book since January! It's great stuff!