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Is Middle Management Really Going Away?

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Middle Managers

I had the pleasure of watching an interview with Jay Samit, CEO of SeaChange International and author of Disrupt You speak at the C-Suite Network conference a few months back. One of the more provocative predictions he made was that in 5 years, one half of all middle management jobs will be gone. Not 20 years. Not 50 years. Five.

Needless to say, the number of implications that creates are far too many to discuss here. Jeff Hayzlett, the interviewer, asked the question we were all asking ourselves — if half of all middle management is going away, what should middle managers do? Here are Samit’s 3 pieces of advice:

  • Commit to life-long learning: change is occurring so rapidly that we can’t possible know what our opportunities will be in 2 or 3 years much less 10 or 15.  By continually learning you can see what may be coming around the bend and be ready for it while those who have chosen to shut-off their learning will never know what hit them.
  • Keep an open mind: the further we go in life we can begin to assume that we know the answers and how it should work.  The truth is, without an open mind, it’s amazing how wrong you can be.
  • Invite data in:  in some circles, you hear a lot about big data.  Data comes in many forms – quantitative, qualitative, anecdotal. Data is available in so many ways, don’t be afraid to gather and use data to help inform your path and illuminate possibilities.

“The quest for certainly blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”

-Erich Fromm

Change Your Attitude

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change your attitude

Anyone will tell you that attitude can make up for other things that may be lacking when it comes to success.  Carol Dweck’s most recent research shows that attitude is a more effective predictor of success than IQ.  However, what makes a difference is not whether you are Mary Sunshine, alway arriving with a smile and a spring in your step or Sam Schlubbum who greets interactions with a stoic face and isn’t excited about too much of anything.

The key difference is whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.  A growth mindset embraces challenges, persists in the face of setbacks, believes effort will lead to a level of mastery, and learns from criticism.  A fixed mindset,on the other hand, tends to avoid challenges, gives up easily, doesn’t believe effort will lead anywhere and ignores useful criticism. I’m sure we all know people who fit both of these descriptions.

If you’re stuck in a fixed mindset, don’t despair. Anyone can move into a growth mindset. The key is to start small. For example, when you’re faced with a challenge and ready to give up, decide to work at it for a few more minutes. Decide what you’re passionate about and find ways to incorporate more of that into your day. When the answer is no, don’t be afraid to try again. Countless successful people were rejected over and over again.

Watch the people around you this week.  Who is exhibiting a fixed mindset?  Who’s exhibiting a growth mindset?

Another Common Misconception

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working guy over 40

I saw a recent example of hiring decisions based assumptions not reality today. It seems that Silicon Valley has a major issue with hiring people over the age of 40. The common thinking is that anyone over 40 has lost their edge, aren’t innovative and stuck in a paradigm. Based on some research by Vivek Wadhwa, the news of the over-40’s creative demise seems to be drastically overstated.

Here are a few innovators and their over-40 inventions:

 

    • Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod when he was 44. He discovered electricity at 46.
      He helped draft the Declaration of Independence at 70, and he invented bifocals after that.
    • Henry Ford introduced the Model T when he was 45. 
    • Sam Walton built Walmart in his mid-40s. 
    • Ray Kroc built McDonald’s in his early 50s. 
    • Ray Kurzweil published The Singularity Is Near in his 50s.
    • Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo when he was 59.
    • Frank Lloyd Wright built his architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater, when he was 68. 
    • Steve Jobs’ most significant innovations-iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad-came after he was 45.

Instead of making the assumption when you’re hiring and cutting out a significant sector of your possible candidate pool, ask some questions that will let you know just how creative that gray-haired guy with few wrinkles really is.

The Five Keys to Having a Nice Conflict

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The Five Keys to Having a Nice Conflict by guest blogger Kent Mitchell, Personal Strengths Publishing

Poorly managed conflict takes a toll on our time, money, health, and happiness. However, we can learn to have a nice conflict-the type of conflict that consistently leads to greater productivity, stronger relationships, and leaves everyone involved feeling good about themselves.

1. Anticipate
Anticipating conflict starts with having a better understanding of the people you’re dealing with and how their view of a situation might differ from your own. When you respect a person’s unique vantage point, you’re better equipped to steer clear of their conflict triggers.

2. Prevent
Preventing conflict is about the deliberate, appropriate use of behaviors in your relationships. If you know a person who highly values trust and fairness, you can prevent conflict with him/her by not using words or actions that threaten those values.

3. Identify
There are three basic approaches in conflict: rising to the challenge (assert), cautiously withdrawing
(analyze), or wanting to keep the peace (accommodate). When you are able to spot these approaches in yourself and others, you are empowered to handle conflict situations more productively.

4. Manage
Managing conflict involves creating conditions that enable others to manage themselves out of the
emotional state of conflict. But it’s also important to manage yourself out. Managing yourself in conflict
can be as easy as taking some time to see things differently.

5. Resolve
To create movement toward resolution, we need to show the other person a path back to feeling good and valued. When people feel good about themselves, they are less likely to feel threatened and are free to move toward resolution.

If you’d like to find out more, contact Kent Mitchell at 562-889-8286 or kent@ps4sdi.com.

Awaken the Sleeping Giant

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innovation diagram

 

Fareed Zakaria of CNN has a terrific series on innovation where he interviews top innovation thinkers on how to spur creativity.  We can all awaken the sleeping giant in each of our companies by spurring innovation in our own areas of influence.

 

 

 

To lead for creativity and innovation:

  • Hire people with natural curiosity and a desire for continual learning.  Innovation and creativity comes from a desire to do things differently and people who are curious, life-long learners ask questions like “why?” and “why not?”
  • Hire people who execute ideas.  Idea generators are the engine of innovation.  Those who execute are the steering wheel.  Without those who can take the ideas from just ideas to ideas that work, you’ll never get where the innovation has the potential to go.
  • Engage people in interesting business issues. People get creative when there is a tough nut to crack.  The next time your team has a difficult challenge facing them, rather than sitting in your office trying to find the solution, pull together a group of your best talent and ask them to solve the problem.  If you’ve seen Apollo 13, think about the scene where the engineers need to find a solution to an oxygen deletion problem by making a square filter fit in a round hole. They’re given a box of materials that are on the lunar module, told their mission and told to make it happen.
  • Make innovation part of the ongoing conversation. Be careful how you position innovation in the conversation. When you throw around the words ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’ most people respond with something like ‘oh, I’m not very creative’ or ‘people like me don’t innovate.  Those are the guys at Google.’  However, if you ask, ‘how can we make things run  more smoothly’ or ‘how can we add more value to our customers’ or ‘what would really make a difference  in how we work’, everyone will have an idea.
  • Create space to develop the best ideas. Give each of your team members the challenge and the space to spend time thinking about their part of the business and where they could take it.  Thinking often takes a back seat to doing in our culture but it is essential to innovation.

Hire the right mix. Engage them in meaty issues. Have a continual dialogue. Give the space to think and act.  Awaken the sleeping giant within.