Reflections on a career of service…
Being The Buffer — and What It Costs You
There is a requirement of this level of job that nobody puts in the job description. It doesn’t appear in your performance review criteria. Your manager has never given you explicit direction to do it. And yet it is one of the things that quietly consumes more of your capacity than almost anything else. It…
The Plateau: What Happens When the Climb Levels Off
There’s a moment in a lot of mid-career trajectories that doesn’t get discussed much. The promotions have slowed down or stopped. Your title isn’t changing. The scope of your role looks roughly the same as it did two or three years ago. You’re doing good work but the upward momentum that defined your early career…
The Relationships Nobody Tells You to Build
Build a relationship with your manager. Develop your team. Get a mentor above you. Invest in the people below you. Most leadership development advice is oriented vertically. The vertical axis of your organization gets all the attention and for good reason. Those relationships matter enormously. But there’s a whole other dimension that rarely gets the…
The Frozen Middle: Leading From Both Sides of the Squeeze
There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that mid-level managers know well. It doesn’t come from working too hard, although you probably are. It doesn’t come from a lack of clarity on your personal goals. It comes from being pulled in two directions simultaneously, with full force, for extended periods of time. Above you, senior leadership…
Leading Experts
As leaders, we all reach a point where we are asked to lead teams that may have more domain expertise than we do. As a matter a fact, if we are doing the job right, our teams should develop more domain expertise than we have. This can create an interesting managing/leading environment, especially for early…
A voice if not a vote
Mid level management is filled with positives and negatives. Every company has a different list of both for folks like us. We each have to decide what we are willing to compromise on – what negatives can we live with to enjoy the positives. This isn’t a post to tell what you should prioritize versus…
Retrospection and Introspection
As we progress through our careers, it is imperative that we make an effort to both be retrospective about where we’ve been and introspective about where we are. There isn’t an age limit for these activities – you can do it at any point. I typically try to process the activities in a specific order…
Predicting the Future Made Easier
As someone who predicts the future for a living (or leads those who do), it is always fascinating to see how misunderstood the concept of forecasting can be. The good old crystal ball isn’t particularly helpful. Neither is a random number generator. Both may seem like they are being used sometimes when the results vary…
The Value of Consistency
As I have been reflecting on my year – a mix of good and bad – one theme has popped up repeatedly: Consistency. It’s been on both sides of the ledger for me this year. I have been attempted to be consistent professionally in how approach my role(s) largely as a pragmatic builder, in how…
The Importance of Expectations
Beyond being a leader, I am subject matter expert in short and long term planning. That requires not only creating a vision of the future that is unknown (as all futures are), but creating a reasonable range of outcomes in that future while landing on and recommending the most likely outcome. Interestingly, the job really…
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View from the Middle 