How To Get Fired

Take a look at the tweet above. I mostly like both Bevan and Baldoni, honestly, but this is absolutely horrible and comical. If a middle manager even vaguely attempted to “adopt a CEO mindset,” he/she would be among the first, if not the absolute first, on the chopping block. CEOs and C-Suite people don’t want others mimicking their mindset; they might claim so in meetings, but the reality of the C-Suite is that it tends to be a bunch of hyper-insecure men who have found one swim lane of true success and relevance in life, and they cling to that swim lane with the voracity of someone on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific.

“Get aligned to the org strategy” is maybe the only thing, or one of two things, here that makes sense. Only about 8% of managers can align strategy and execution, so having more middle cogs that can do this would be good for organizations in general. The problem is often that the word “strategy” itself is meaningless. Despite the rise in the “Chief Strategy Officer” title, a lot of executives are still pretty clueless on what “strategy” is, often confusing it with logistics and operations. It’s hard to “align” with vague stuff.

Next up: communicate relentlessly. That’s not a bad one. Communication at work is typically a train wreck. The problem I’ve seen with most middle managers is that they confuse/conflate communication with extra meetings and/or micromanagement. That’s not actually “communication,” but a lot of people think it is. Check-in meetings and tracking documents. Now, if you’re actually talking to employees about work, where the company is headed, challenges, pivots, their lives back at home, etc… that’s good. Middle managers should do that stuff. I am not sure executives WANT them doing that stuff — execs want the trains to run and the peons not to pipe up — but that’s a good role for a middle manager in a half-functional org.

Network rigorously: you should to build pipeline, collaborators, future employees, deals, etc. A lot of middle managers “network rigorously” when they are trying to leave the org, and at no other time. And often, if you’re seen as going to a lot of external events or spending time externally, even though it could be good for business, many executives see that and think “What’s Stan up to? Where’s he headed, or what’s he chasing?” There is not a lot of trust inside organizations, especially from executives on down. So this is semi-good advice, but the context in which it’s perceived is usually a chicken fart.

And finally, listen attentively. Seems good on face. What it means in actual execution is that execs want you to sit your ass down, listen to every word they utter, and then go do that exact thing, in that exact order, while making sure revenue is up and to the right. Phrased another way:

We actually know that command and control management leads to shorter life spans, but it’s been the norm for about five decades, and it’s really the only way a lot of top-dog men can conceptualize work at all. Who wants the peons to have freedom and original thought? That doesn’t get the widgets to scale. That might distract from the scale of the widgets, and that’s a true concern to the brass.

If a middle manager behaved as that tweet says, he/she would likely get fired — even though he/she would be a pretty great middle manager in a lot of respects. And doesn’t the fact that “doing the things to be great” equates with “getting fired” tell you everything you need to know about the structure of modern work?